63
votes
Accepted
Why do doctors ask for your race?
Race and ethnicity are risk factors in many diseases. Examples include, but are not limited to, cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy.
There is also an epidemiological purpose of collecting this ...
- 835
20
votes
Why do doctors ask for your race?
There's a myriad of adjustments that can improve patients' treatment if it's race-informed. As a very small but characteristic example, the 2021 European Society of Cardiology Guidelines for Heart ...
18
votes
Accepted
Can N95 face masks filter out benzopyrene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or formaldehyde?
No.
No, no, no.
Covid face masks help prevent contagious disease. They are not meant for anything else. Period. End of public health announcement.
To be clear, N95 facemasks are particulate ...
- 196
11
votes
Why do doctors ask for your race?
Here are some random examples:
Ashkenazi Jewish Genetic Diseases
Bloom syndrome.
Canavan disease.
Cystic fibrosis. Th
Familial dysautonomia (FD).
Fanconi anemia.
Gaucher disease.
Mucolipidosis IV.
...
- 211
9
votes
Accepted
Flu vaccine paradox
The paradox you describe is resolved if you think about the influenza vaccine that is approved as a procedure for making an annual vaccine. It is the procedure, repeated year-after-year, that has been ...
- 14.4k
8
votes
Accepted
Is a study of one research in the field of medicine?
To build off of what JohnP said, scientific evidence has a hierarchy of reliability. Some types of papers, by their very nature, are more academically rigorous and likely to lead you to the truth.
...
- 1,271
8
votes
What are the benefits of making animal viruses capable of infecting humans?
First off; to clear a couple of things up:
Furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses are quite common - about 30-50% of human ones have them naturally1, and these sites do NOT necessarily cause them to ...
- 3,545
7
votes
Accepted
How much is green tea really good against tooth decay?
Green tea, or any real tea made from the Camellia sinensis plant, has many advantages as a go-to beverage.
It itself does not contain significant amounts of sugar, it has an enamel preserving pH ...
- 6,928
7
votes
Accepted
Resources for human anatomy
TeachMeAnatomy
Containing over 700 vibrant, full-colour images, TeachMeAnatomy is a comprehensive anatomy encyclopedia presented in a visually-appealing, easy-to-read format.
Created by a team of ...
- 642
7
votes
Is a study of one research in the field of medicine?
"Studies of one" are also known as case studies, N-of-1 studies or case reports. I will refer to them below as case reports, for simplicity. They vary in quality just like any other type of studies. ...
- 835
7
votes
Question about "per person-years" stats in medical studies
These are incidence rates. They basically report the number of occurrences over a specific period "at risk" using the following formula.
Number of new cases of disease during specified time ...
- 6,236
6
votes
Accepted
Correlation between carbonated drinks and IQ
Am I reading this right, that junk food and drinking soft drinks is
correlated with higher intelligence quotient ? Does all that sugar beside its negative side effects (tooth decay, insulin highs) ...
- 5,814
6
votes
How to calculate my "approximate" mortality rate while in ICU?
An individual person does not have a mortality rate: it means the fraction of people out of a group who die over a specific time period. It may seem like your particular chance of dying is that same ...
- 3,989
6
votes
What data and research is available on the mortality risk (infection fatality rate) of COVID-19?
Well, there is one meta-analytical estimate of the IFR for Covid-19 out already albeint only as a draft paper:
there were 13 estimates of IFR included in the final meta-analysis, from a wide range ...
6
votes
Can N95 face masks filter out benzopyrene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or formaldehyde?
TL;DR - The specific answer is "NO, N95 masks cannot reliably protect one from the questioned chemicals/compounds". But there's so much more to consider...
This supplemental answer is more ...
- 116
6
votes
Does legislation on transgender healthcare affect medical researchers?
Here's an article that discusses use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with gender affirming care: Roles of Randomized Controlled Trials in Establishing Evidence-Based Gender-Affirming Care and ...
- 14.4k
5
votes
Can scopolamine really be given through the ear?
Scopolamine products to prevent motion sickness are to be placed behind the ear to. One brand name for this product is Transderm-Scop.
I will write below why it is placed behind the ear, but in terms ...
5
votes
Accepted
Machine learning for medical image scanning
Commonly used diagnostic imaging methods are:
Ultrasonography
X-ray
Computed tomography (CT)
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Scintigraphy or radionuclide scan (injecting a radioactive tracer into a ...
- 15.9k
5
votes
Accepted
Is daylight savings linked to heart attacks?
This connection has been reported by several groups, in credible journals (I left a few references below). The study and news article you are referring to is confirming earlier findings, it is not the ...
- 14.4k
5
votes
Why are there no long-term humans trials of Noopept?
I don't see any trials of the drug in the ClinicalTrials.gov database; it seems there is almost no study of this drug clinically besides a couple studies in Russia, let alone long-term human trials. I'...
- 14.4k
5
votes
Why are diagnostics based on the microbiome so slow to adopt?
I've been following microbiomes since they first began to be discussed, and remember the first fecal transplant done for treatment of C. diff. Now it's a common enough treatment. But when an average ...
- 10.1k
4
votes
Resources for human anatomy
Gray's Anatomy - an old but complete online book with detailed text and pictures.
Get Body Smart - by organic systems, at a glance
Inner Body - on hover interactive images, with text
KenHub - 50 ...
- 15.9k
4
votes
Accepted
What does "Primary Purpose: Treatment" mean in a clinical study?
Your interpretation is basically correct.
The formal definition is:
https://prsinfo.clinicaltrials.gov/definitions.html#IntPurpose
Primary Purpose *§ Definition: The main objective of the
...
- 9,946
4
votes
Is there a reliable website about cosmetic science?
I would trust the professional organizations' websites and journals:
American Academy of Dermatology http://www.AAD.org
American Osteopathic College of Dermatology http://www.aocd.org/
American ...
- 5,814
4
votes
How to deal with conflicting health advice?
The best method to verify the autenticity of a scientific news, is to search authorized papers about the subject.
You can find all the published papers on this website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
...
- 197
4
votes
Accepted
How to search for a topic in humanity's medical knowledge?
I second Thomas' suggestion of pubmed.gov! Below are some details of my favorite sources for this kind of thing.
NOTE - It can definitely be tricky to find reliable sources that aren't behind a ...
- 56
4
votes
Why do doctors ask for your race?
On a scale from sledgehammer to scalpel, race, as recorded in medical data is closer to sledgehammer in terms of granularity, but hey, sometimes we need sledgehammers (e.g. for broad epidemiological ...
- 49
4
votes
Accepted
Is there any statistical overlap between people who identify as non-cis and people who have an unusual number of sex chromosomes?
Fernández and colleagues appear to have addressed your question (2018. PMID 29892954):
To investigate the possible influence of karyotype on the etiology of Gender Dysphoria we carried out the ...
- 3,323
4
votes
How has computational modelling and simulation contributed to medical research?
I recommend looking into protein folding.
Since the 1960s, computer modelling has been used to (attempt to) predict the structure of proteins and the steps they go through to get there. Low-resolution ...
3
votes
Why medicine modelling is distributed on regular person's computers?
I don't know how readily available supercomputers are to researchers and universities but I would imagine that a big part of the answer to your question would be down to cost.
Supercomputers vs ...
- 6,236
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible