Epidemiology:
A branch of medical science that discusses the spreading of the disease amongst the human population
is called Epidemiology. It determines the factors determining the spread of the disease. Epidemiology
determines it with the help of statistics.
Use of Epidemiology
The uses of epidemiology are described as follows.
Important Factors
Firstly determine the factors, agent, host, and carrier of the disease. Epidemiology does deep research
on his studies. The research includes demography, sociology, psychology, all study of medicines. The
information about the disease is collected in an orderly manner. This helps the team to work efficiently
and go through the work history seamlessly.
Occurrence of Disease in a Group or Community
The purpose of community diagnosis and prognosis is required to study the occurrence of disease in the
environment. Epidemiology pays attention to the groups of people having the same disease, rather than
the individual. Epidemic proportions, the leading cause of death, high fatality cases, or complications are
used to determine the severity of the diseases. It also checks amongst a group of the young generation
and older generation separately.
Epidemiology of Disease
At the cellular and functional levels, the disease is initialized. It depends on the disease at which point it
gets detected and manifested. Indicating sensitivity is also a point of dependency and is known as clinical
epidemiology. At times, a disease can be stationary and arrested. Sometimes it can be aggravated or
relieved.
Determination of Risk
The measure of risk is crucial. The rates of the type in the parenthesis are appropriate demonstrators of
an epidemiologist. A person will catch a disease or will detect the disease at different times. The person
will die with the disease at a certain point. For prognosis and actual purposes, all these points measure
probabilities of risk.
Study Occurrence of Disease and Death
A historical study is a study of the occurrence of disease or death with time as a variable. With time, the
distribution of the population changes. For example, there is a difference in the age distribution of a
population but the difference in sex distribution is null.
Search of causes
The cause of diseases is very undetectable. It may spread from the host as well as carriers. The evidence
is chiefly circumstantial in cases of cancer and arteriosclerosis. Certain hosts and environmental factors
can be the reason for the spread of certain diseases.
Prevention and Control of the Disease
The ideal control measure is the primary measure to prevent disease. Diagnosis and treatment come
under secondary control. Rehabilitation and defect correction are tertiary control.
Identification of Clinical Syndrome
A group of signs and symptoms are
needed to identify a disease. Based on the subtle peculiarities, we can differentiate amongst the disease.
Types of Epidemiology
Case-control studies: The degree of association between various risk factors and outcomes are used in
case-control studies.
Cohort studies differentiate patients into two groups. It checks if the patient develops the disease in the
exposed or unexposed groups.
Experimental studies include randomized clinical trials that are standards for study purposes.
Function of Epidemiology
To address the research work logically and with less ambiguity, the study of epidemiology is crucial.
Koch’s Postulates:
Koch’s postulates are four criteria designed to establish a causal relationship between a causative
microbe and a disease. The postulates were formulated by Robert Koch and Friedrich Loeffler in 1884
and refined and published by Koch in 1890. Koch applied the postulates to establish the etiology of
anthrax and tuberculosis, but they have been generalized to other diseases.
Koch’s postulates
Koch’s postulates are the following:
1.The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should
not be found in healthy organisms.
2.The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3.The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4.The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified
as being identical to the original specific causative agent.
Koch’s postulates have also influenced scientists who examine microbial pathogenesis from a molecular
point of view. In the 1980s, a molecular version of Koch’s postulates was developed to guide the
identification of microbial genes encoding virulence factors.