The limitations of opportunistic epidemiology, pseudopod epidemiology

Epidemiology has been remarkably successful in the past in identifying the important agents of disease, the impact of the environment, both physical and social, and interrelationship with host susceptibility (genomics). Many of the advances in improving the health of individuals and populations have been the result of epidemiology studies that have identified the specific “agents” of disease and application of public health and preventive medicine. In recent years, large longitudinal studies have dominated epidemiology research, especially long incubation period chronic diseases. The initial hypotheses in these studies have been expanded by vertical extension studies using newer technologies to measure independent variables, vertical pseudopods, and additional studies of other diseases, horizontal pseudopods, of the original longitudinal study. Host susceptibility, i.e. genomics, has also become a prominent component of these longitudinal studies. The critical question addressed in this paper is whether these “pseudopod” epidemiology approaches have enhanced public health or generated a large number of studies of little impact.