Obstetrics and Gynecology Epidemiology Center, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
Exp Gerontol. 2010 Apr;45(4):297-301. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2009.12.011. Epub 2009 Dec 23.
The union between epidemiology and epigenetics creates a new science that combines the strengths of both fields: the appropriate study design with adequate sample size to identify disease biomarkers and to uncover mechanistic pathways for environmental exposure and disease associations while controlling for confounding variables. Realization of the promises of epigenetic epidemiology requires overcoming some challenges in the design, conduct, and interpretation of epigenetic studies in human populations. These challenges include the choice of the appropriate tissue, confounding, misclassification, and effect modification. In particular, the tissue-specificity of epigenetic marks restricts epidemiologic studies of adequate size to easily accessible tissues.
流行病学和表观遗传学的结合产生了一门新的科学，它结合了这两个领域的优势：适当的研究设计和足够的样本量，以确定疾病生物标志物，并揭示环境暴露与疾病关联的机制途径，同时控制混杂变量。实现表观遗传学流行病学的承诺需要克服在人类群体中进行表观遗传学研究的设计、实施和解释方面的一些挑战。这些挑战包括选择适当的组织、混杂、分类错误和效应修饰。特别是，表观遗传标记的组织特异性限制了对易于获取的组织进行足够规模的流行病学研究。
