Microbial Pathogenesis & Infectious Diseases

Epidemiology and Public Health

Epidemiology is the study of disease occurrence and transmission or programme in a human population; epidemiological studies basically focus on the distribution and determinants of the disease. Epidemiology may also be considered as the method of public health—a scientific approach to studying disease and health problems. Epidemiology consists of research methods and specific strategies for counting and calculating the occurrence and risk of disease. Therefore, epidemiological studies of drug use employ these methods and statistical measures to study the occurrence and distribution of drug use and its associated problems. Examples of epidemiology applied to drug use include adverse drug reaction reporting, post marketing surveillance studies, and clinical drug trials.