"Epidemiology - Current Perspectives on Research and Practice" ed. by Nuno Lunet

This special issue resulted from the invitation made to selected authors to contribute with an overview of a specific subject of their choice, and is based on a collection of papers chosen to exemplify some of the interests, uses and views of the epidemiology across different areas of research and practice. Epidemiologists with different levels of expertise and interests will be able to find informative and inspiring readings among the chapters of this book.

Rather than the comprehensiveness and coherence of a conventional textbook, readers will find a set of independent chapters, each of them of a great interest in their own specialized areas within epidemiology. Taken together, they illustrate the contrast between the attempt to extend the limits of applicability of epidemiological research, and the "regular" scientific activity in this field or an applied epidemiology.

Contents
Preface
1 Changing Contexts in Epidemiologic Research - Thoughts of Young Epidemiologists on Major Challenges for the Next Decades
2 Frameworks for Causal Inference in Epidemiology
3 Causal Diagrams and Three Pairs of Biases
4 Qualitative Research in Epidemiology
5 Between Epidemiology and Basic Genetic Research - Systems Epidemiology
6 Molecular Epidemiology of Parasitic Diseases: The Chagas Disease Model
7 Viral Evolutionary Ecology: Conceptual Basis of a New Scientific Approach for Understanding Viral Emergence
8 Overview of Pharmacoepidemiological Databases in the Assessment of Medicines Under Real-Life Conditions
9 Role of Epidemiological Data Within the Drug Development Lifecycle: A Chronic Migraine Case Study
10 Clinical Epidemiology: Principles Revisited in an Approach to Study Heart Failure
11 The Use of Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis in Modern Epidemiology