It was a remarkable 33 years ago that the first
edition of Strom’s Pharmacoepidemiology was
published. The preface to that book stated that
pharmacoepidemiology was a new field with a
new generation of pharmacoepidemiologists
arising to join the field’s few pioneers. Over the
ensuing 32 years, the field indeed has grown
and no longer deserves to be called “new.”
Many of those “new generation” scientists
(including two of the editors of this book) are
now “middle-aged” pharmacoepidemiologists.
Despite its relatively brief academic life, a
short history of pharmacoepidemiology and
review of its current state will set the stage for
the purpose of this textbook.
Pharmacoepidemiology originally arose from
the union of the fields of clinical pharmacology
and epidemiology. Pharmacoepidemiology
studies the use of and the effects of medical
products in large numbers of people and
applies the methods of epidemiology to the
content area of clinical pharmacology. This
field represents the science underlying postmarketing medical product surveillance, studies of the effects of medical products (i.e. drugs,
biologicals, devices) performed after a product
has been approved for use. In recent years,
pharmacoepidemiology has expanded to
include many other types of studies, as well.