With the increasing availability of linked electronic health records, long-running cohorts, and high-throughput technologies, the potential for epidemiology research to improve the care of patients with kidney disease is greater than ever before. In this review, we highlight the application of epidemiology techniques to identify, evaluate, and address chronic kidney disease. We discuss studies that inform guidelines, identify health disparities, evaluate the genetic basis of disease, and relate data on omics, such as proteomics, metabolomics, and genetics, to outcomes. We describe how observational data have been used to facilitate the conduct of randomized controlled trials through enhanced identification of high-risk individuals and the evaluation of surrogate kidney disease outcomes as well as to address clinical questions where randomized controlled trials are impractical or infeasible. Finally, we discuss consumer engagement in research, including that of patients, policymakers, payers, and health care system, and the role of kidney disease epidemiology research in implementation science and as a key source of data and methodology for precision medicine.

中文翻译：

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流行病学研究旨在促进慢性肾脏病护理的改善。

随着链接的电子健康记录，长期运行的人群和高通量技术的可用性不断提高，流行病学研究改善肾脏疾病患者护理的潜力比以往任何时候都大。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了流行病学技术在识别，评估和解决慢性肾脏疾病中的应用。我们讨论的研究可为指南提供信息，识别健康差异，评估疾病的遗传基础，并将蛋白质组学，代谢组学和遗传学等组学数据与结果相关联。我们描述了观察数据如何通过增强对高危人群的识别和评估替代性肾脏疾病的结果，用于促进随机对照试验的进行，以及在随机对照试验不可行或不可行的情况下解决临床问题的方法。最后，我们讨论了消费者对研究的参与，包括患者，决策者，付款人和医疗保健系统的参与，以及肾脏疾病流行病学研究在实施科学中的作用以及作为精密医学数据和方法的关键来源。