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Abstract

Neuroepidemiology is a translational science based on the use of epidemiologic data in the domain of neurological and psychiatric diseases. The epidemiological data have the goal of understanding the causes of disease collecting information on new cases of disease (incidence) and evaluating the consequence of disease using information on new and old cases (prevalence) estimating the burden of disease.  The unifying concept in epidemiology is the construction of appropriate analytic methods to elaborate heterogeneous and complex data with construction of the proper study design, techniques to estimate the links between causes of diseases and disease onset and frequencies, taking into account possible factors that may distort or induce changes in the estimates (confounding and interaction). In this article, we analyze the pros and cons of all the main study designs to determine frequencies, association and causes of disease: cohort studies, case-control, prognostic studies and randomized clinical trials. We analyze also a particular study design as the case cross-over study.