What relevance do advances in molecular biology and genetics have for epidemiology: high tech needle and thread to sew the web of causation.
Epidemiology has changed, during the past, from miasma versus germ theory to the studies of relationship between exposure and outcome. New definitions such as risk factors or multifactorial aetiology, and more recently web of causation, have been helpful to understand many diseases. Molecular biology and genetics advances in the past decade can be instruments that allow to investigate more deeply the web of causation. Molecular biomarkers are the new investigating mean. Examples of studies using these new techniques are presented, in many epidemiological fields: in non communicable disease with linkage and association studies, allowing experimental studies; in cancer, investigating susceptibility to the disease, early exposure to environmental carcinogens detection and specific mutational patterns in aetiological studies; in communicable disease, in particular with genetic subtyping of particular agents and causal mechanisms research. To mix up all the knowledge required to handle these techniques and epidemiology shall be profitable integrate multidisciplinary team of scientists, epidemiologists and molecular biologists together. This might be the way to approach the distribution and determinants of disease in deep but also with more clear and explicit explanation of the elaborate relationships.
Vegni
F E
FE
Ist. Di Igiene e Medicina Preventiva, Università degli Studi di Milano.
D015984:Causality; D004198:Disease Susceptibility; D005819:Genetic Markers; D005823:Genetics / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D008967:Molecular Biology / Q000639:trends; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology / Q000639:trends*
D005819:Genetic Markers