Alvarez-Requejo A, Porta M
Pharmacovigilance Regional Centre of Castilla y León, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain.
Drug Saf. 1995 Jul;13(1):1-7. doi: 10.2165/00002018-199513010-00001.
Pharmacoepidemiology is the application of epidemiological reasoning, methods and knowledge to the study of the uses and effects (beneficial and adverse) of drugs in human populations. As referred to by the term 'pharmacoepidemiology', the discipline now enters into its second decade, although its origins go back to the beginnings of this century. This article reviews the opinions of leading pharmacoepidemiologists on the scope and prospects for pharmacoepidemiology, and summarises the most important challenges that the discipline faces on its way towards the next century. The future of pharmacoepidemiology requires the development of research methods more able to cope with the specific problems posed by the study of drugs, notably the issue of confounding by indication and the ability to adjust accurately for severity of disease. Capacity building should also continue during the next years; training of professionals, the optimisation of computerised databases for research purposes and their joint use with more traditional epidemiological methods are major challenges. From a public health perspective, a critical task is to assess the impact that vaccines and drugs have on the overall patterns of disease in well defined populations.
药物流行病学是运用流行病学的推理、方法和知识，研究药物在人群中的使用情况及其效果（有益和有害）。尽管药物流行病学这一学科的起源可追溯到本世纪初，但就其名称而言，它现在已进入第二个十年。本文回顾了主要药物流行病学家对药物流行病学的范围和前景的看法，并总结了该学科在下个世纪面临的最重要挑战。药物流行病学的未来需要开发更能应对药物研究中所提出的特定问题的研究方法，尤其是适应症混杂问题以及准确调整疾病严重程度的能力。在未来几年中还应继续进行能力建设；专业人员培训、优化用于研究目的的计算机数据库以及将其与更传统的流行病学方法联合使用是主要挑战。从公共卫生角度来看，一项关键任务是评估疫苗和药物对明确界定人群中疾病总体模式的影响。
