Lectures 17 and 18 and 20: Epidemiologic Principles and Methods

After this lecture, you should be able to answer the following:

1. What is the definition of "epidemiology?"

2. What is the definition of "disease frequency?"

3. What is the definition of "incidence?" How does the incidence help identify causes of disease? Use thalidomide as an example.

4. What is the definition of "prevalence?" Why is it that the prevalence will be much higher than the incidence with respect to chronic diseases that are not lethal? What kinds of diseases generate similar incidence and prevalence rates?

(From the Chalkboard)...What is the French Paradox? What does red wine have to do with it? Genetics? What is resveratrol? What does resveratrol do to mice?

5. What does the distribution of a disease tell the epidemiologist?

6. What is an epidemic curve? Draw one and explain to your study partner what the curve means.

7. How does information on the distribution of cancer mortality lead to hypotheses about causes of different types of cancer?

8. With respect to people who move from low cancer-rate countries to high cancer-rate countries, explain the hypothesis that environmental factors rather than genetics is involved.

9. What are prospective studies? retrospective studies? What advantage do most epidemiological studies have compared to most animal studies?

10. Using the "randomized, double-blind clinical trial" as an example, explain what intervention studies are.

11. Explain the design and results obtained during the clinical trial of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine in the 1950s.

12. Explain the design and results obtained from the "randomized, double-blind" Physician's Health Study.

13. What are cohort studies? What are the different types of cohort studies? What does the Relative Risk in a cohort study say about the association between an exposure and a disease? Describe the Relative Risk obtained from the Doll and Hill cohort study to your study partner.

14. What are case-control studies? Are they prospective? retrospective? In what way are case-control studies more efficient than cohort studies? What was the Reye's syndrome case-control study? What is Reye's syndrome? What does the Odds Ratio in a case-control study say about the strength of an association between an exposure and a disease? How does one calculate the odds ratio? Explain the British Breast Cancer Study to your study partner. What do the results of that study suggest concerning breast-cancer risk and long-term contraceptive use?

15. Please read the assigned homework material carefully and answer all the homework questions.