Longevity Bulletin: The pharmacology issue

The extraordinary events of 2020 have shown us how much we rely on epidemiology and pharmacology.

Epidemiology helped quantify and model the spread of the pandemic and its mortality impact, while pharmacology offers us tests and, we hope soon, a vaccine. 

Issue 12 of the IFoA’s Longevity Bulletin explores the topic of pharmacology from a number of different perspectives. examining:

•  Whether the prescribing of too many medications is actually having a detrimental effect on health, and why the current system encourages over-prescribing
•  The growth of epidemiology as a research area since the 1950s, looking at how it moved away from the medical field into academia, and why results from medical trials may not always be as robust as imagined
•  The opioid epidemic in the UK and the US, and the steps being taken to try to mitigate it
•  The role of pharmacology in the treatment of diabetes and high cholesterol, and the impact of the statins used to treat high cholesterol on the incidence of diabetes.

To read the complete bulletin, please go to bit.ly/36OZbUZ