Epidemiology & Public Health

Track 7: Genetic Epidemiology

Genetic epidemiology is the study of how genes and environmental factors interact to influence human traits, health, and disease. With conceptual and methodological contributions from epidemiology, genetic epidemiology grew out of population genetics, namely human quantitative genetics. All diseases, whether mutual and complex or ostensibly simpler, such as so-called monogenic (single-gene) disorders, are included in modern genetic epidemiology. Many advances in the epidemiology of genetic diseases have concerned hereditary problems that appear to be straightforward (e.g., cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease). Hereditary epidemiology involves a range of facets of epidemiology, including investigations of prevalence, clinical epidemiology, genotype-phenotype connections, and illness development and outcomes, in addition to the general focus on genetic disease.