Epidemiological approaches to frailty - contributions from the ESTHER study

Biases can arise at various stages of research, from study design and data collection to analysis and interpretation. Recognizing and addressing these biases is essential to ensure the validity and reliability of epidemiological findings.Broadly speaking, biases in epidemiology fall into three main categories: selection bias, information bias, and confounding. A more detailed description of possible biases is:  

Epidemiology, known as the cornerstone of public health, involves studying the distribution and determinants of health-related events in defined populations and applying these insights to control health issues. This is essential for understanding how diseases spread, identifying populations at greater risk, and implementing measures to control or prevent outbreaks. Epidemiology addresses not only infectious diseases but also non-communicable conditions like cancer and cardiovascular disease,...

The human microbiota begins developing at birth and undergoes continual change as we age. Infancy marks a critical period of microbial sensitivity, offering a “window of opportunity” during which beneficial microbes help mature the immune system. By age three, children typically develop a more stable and diverse microbial community. Newborns acquire microbes from their immediate environment; vaginal delivery favors maternal vaginal microbes, while cesarean births favor microbes from...

When a person's physical, emotional, intellectual, social development or spiritual functioning is compromised, this deviation from a healthy normal state is called illness. Illness creates stress that in turn harms individuals. Irritation, anger, denial, hopelessness, and fear are behavioral and emotional changes an individual experiences in the phases of illness. A variety of factors influence a person's health and well-being.
For instance, risk factors are connected to illness,...

Age-related pharmacokinetic changes are extensively documented, but understanding age-related pharmacodynamic alterations is relatively limited. This knowledge gap can be partly attributed to the complexity of developing appropriate measures of drug responses compared to bioanalytical methods for determining drug concentrations.Most information regarding age-related differences in human pharmacodynamics originates from cross-sectional studies. However, these studies assume that observed mean...

Epidemiological study designs are fundamental tools for investigating the distribution, determinants, and control of health conditions in populations. They help researchers understand the relationships between exposures and outcomes, and they broadly fall into two categories: "observational" and "experimental" studies.
Observational studies are those where the researcher does not intervene but rather observes natural variations. They include cross-sectional, cohort, and...