BACKGROUND A novel influenza A virus strain (H1N1-2009) spread first in Mexico and the United Stated in late April 2009, leading to the first influenza pandemic of the 21(st) century. The objective of this study was to determine the epidemiological and virological characteristics of the pandemic influenza A (H1N1-2009) in Zhanjiang, China. METHODS The case and outbreak reports of influenza-li...

BACKGROUND The counterfactual approach provides a clear and coherent framework to think about a variety of important concepts related to causation. Meanwhile, directed acyclic graphs have been used as causal diagrams in epidemiologic research to visually summarize hypothetical relations among variables of interest, providing a clear understanding of underlying causal structures of bias and effe...

PURPOSE Epidemiologists have long contributed to policy efforts to address health disparities. Three examples illustrate how epidemiologists have addressed health disparities in the United States and abroad through a "social determinants of health" lens. METHODS To identify examples of how epidemiologic research has been applied to reduce health disparities, we queried epidemiologists engaged...

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states and in specified populations and the application to control health problems. Classified as either descriptive or analytical, a variety of epidemiologic approaches can be used to allow assessment of hypothesized risk factor exposure with disease outcomes. This article reviews salient aspects of epidemiologic ...

Race has been identified as an important risk factor for the development of sepsis and as a predictor of poor outcomes in sepsis. For example, black individuals have been demonstrated to be nearly twice as likely to develop sepsis and to have greater mortality from sepsis than white individuals. Recent data from a longitudinal cohort, which examined incident hospitalizations for infections occu...

BACKGROUND Quantiles are a staple of epidemiologic research: in contemporary epidemiologic practice, continuous variables are typically categorized into tertiles, quartiles and quintiles as a means to illustrate the relationship between a continuous exposure and a binary outcome. DISCUSSION In this paper we argue that this approach is highly problematic and present several potential alternati...

Causal diagrams have a long history of informal use and, more recently, have undergone formal development for applications in expert systems and robotics. We provide an introduction to these developments and their use in epidemiologic research. Causal diagrams can provide a starting point for identifying variables that must be measured and controlled to obtain unconfounded effect estimates. The...

INTRODUCTION Dental caries is still a social problem in many countries, including Poland. Through epidemiological studies conducted in index groups among children and adults, it is possible to monitor its progress and take appropriate action. The Podlaskie region is an area where the severity of dental caries in children has been the highest in the country for a few years, both in urban and rur...

AIMS This paper presents examples to illustrate the utility and limitations in the use of epidemiology in alcohol research and discusses some promising new directions. METHODS Review of literature, concentrating on epidemiological alcohol research with relevance to public health. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION Epidemiology offers tools for assessment of causes and effects of alcohol consumption as...