Epidemiological studies - Essay Example

Biology: Essay All of the drugs manufactured for human consumption usually go through numerous tests that include epidemiological studies and clinical trials. This trials and studies are aimed at determining if the drugs are fir or safe for their consumption. An epidemiological study is the study of a population in order to determine and examine the relationship or correlation between certain segments of the population and their increased risk to disease due to expose to certain environmental exposure.

This involves determining what factors related to diseases and the factors that might protect humans against the disease (Gallin, John and Frederick 15) Epidemiological studies are usually divided in two categories which are; Descriptive epidemiology which looks into a population by age group ,who gets affected by a disease, the rate and time at which the disease occurs and how often it occurs and the place where it occurs. Another one is analytical epidemiology which looks into finding out the causes of disease within a population by using cohort studies, case control studies and experimental studies giving attention to ideology.

Bottom line, epidemiology largely relies on figures for finding out and quantifying the association between disease and the risk factors in order to establish if there is a common attendance of occurrence of certain diseases within a given geographical scope. Clinical trials on the other hand are the research studies that are carried out in order to confirm or denounce if a drug is fit for human consumption using designated or pre-defined rules. Clinical trials are composed of five other trials which include screening trials, quality of life trials, diagnostic trials, prevention trials and treatment trials (Gallin, John I, and Frederick).

Epidemiology looks into the distribution and human health problem on a certain population by using the person, time and place variables method while clinical trials look at the signs and symptoms of a specific case and making diagnosis. After carrying out epidemiological studies one is able to find out the diagnosis of health of a community, the history of diseases within a certain population, individual health risks and syndromes, the distribution of health services and how available they are to a given population and causes of diseases within a certain population (Gallin, John I, and Frederick 23) .

It should be noted that all the above result could bee arrived on the ground that it could be due to chance, some association found out are casual, some could be due to the errors in the selection of subjects and geographical scope or it could be due to the presence of a cofounder. The results found out from epidemiological studies are the distribution and determinants of diseases and other human health problems. The results obtained from the previous investigations on human studies should be adequate enough or rather sufficient enough to point out that the drug is fit for the investigation about to be carried on human humans before the clinical trial is carried out.

The review and evaluation of up rising clinical data should be highly considered .this should be especially carried out by professionals in assessing their implications for the safety of trial subjects. Further more the investigators of the clinical trials should be responsible for protecting the subjects of the clinical trials. The refinery of dosing requirements is also considered in carrying out a clinical trial. Other consideration in human drug investigations dictates that the trials should be designed, conducted, properly analyzed and appropriately reported according to proper designated scientific grounds (Gallin, John I, and Frederick 38).

Consumers of drugs should be able to have a limit of the information given out by the media on the research carried because the media is known for sensationalized information as much as blown out of proportion facts in order to sell their news or goods. Most of the research carried put on clinical trials or epidemiology is so limited to a given population that it does not necessarily apply to everyone. Consumers should also know that awareness and incidence are the hardest variable to measure in terms of research, the media is sometimes involved in damage control measure and not selling a quality product or service, most of the data presented by the media is not entirely from research but narrowed down information to sell a given product.

Consumers should seek professional help from specialists rather than guessing their dieses depending on the information in the media (Gallin, John I, and Frederick 98) Works cited Gallin, John I, and Frederick P. Ognibene. Principles and Practice of Clinical Research. Oxford: Academic, 2012. Internet Resource.