Abstract
This chapter discusses the epidemiological principles and epidemiological figures of some common sleep disorders. Modern applications of epidemiology include the study of chronic diseases, the evaluation of health status and an evaluation of genetic and environmental factors associated with diseases or symptoms in defined populations. Epidemiological studies can be divided into descriptive, analytical, and intervention studies. Classic examples are cross-sectional studies with data collected at a defined moment and retrospective studies that are based on existing medical histories or other collected data. In descriptive studies, distribution is given with computations of statistical significance between different groups of subjects. Analytical or etiological studies allow more inferences to be done than descriptive studies, especially if the study has been prospective in time (longitudinal). Interventions are commonly used in clinical epidemiological research, e.g., to study the effect of a new hypnotic in insomnia, or to study the effect of weight loss in the treatment of sleep apnea. Ideally a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is designed.
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