title: [Epidemiology: a developing science].
abstract: The story of French epidemiology dates back to Daniel Bernoulli (1760), with regard to mathematical epidemiology,and to Pierre-Charles Louis (1838), with regard to 'numerical medicine', the ancestor of the modern evidence-based medicine. This thematic issue samples some of the recent issues of modern epidemiology: biostatisticians have developed a series of specialized techniques to encover the risk factors and to measure the proportion of the disease frequency they can account for (one paper). Epidemiology of chronic diseases is now providing new insights into the tricky relationships between environmental, genetic factors, and diseases (four papers). Epidemiology is not just concerned with diseases. All aspects of human biology and physiology for which a population approach is necessary, are concerned: one paper deals with the case of fecundity and fertility, which are studied by both demographic and epidemiological approaches. One of the roles of epidemiology is to bring rational answers to disputed issues in public health, such as the hazards of postmenopausal hormonal therapy (one paper). Finally, the power of mathematics is increasingly used to understand better the dynamics of infectious diseases (two papers).
authors.forename: Alain-Jacques
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Valleron
mesh_terms: D001699:Biometry; D004813:Epidemiology; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends