Molecular pathological epidemiology: the role of epidemiology in the omics-era

Excerpt

The ‘omics’-era is well and truly upon us. Driven by technological innovations, fields such as genetics, epigenetics, proteomics and imaging are advancing at tremendous pace and in addition to unraveling pathophysiological mechanisms of health and disease, also reveal the increasingly complex biology that forms the basis of living systems. In this issue of the European Journal of Epidemiology, Nishihara and colleagues describe ‘molecular pathological epidemiology’, a relatively novel sub-field within epidemiology that examines the association between a risk factor and disease by taking into account the inherent pathological (and often molecular) heterogeneity of a disease [1]. Molecular pathological epidemiology had its original applications in oncology, but—driven by omics-research—is now quickly disseminating to other fields of biomedical research. Molecular pathological epidemiology holds great promise by bringing together epidemiology and molecular biology, two fields that traditionally have been considered at the opposite extremes of the biomedical research spectrum. It is expected that in coming years molecular pathological epidemiology will importantly shape the way, in which omics-research is conducted and interpreted. …