Category: Clinical Trials
Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin versus COVID-19: Grift, conspiracy theories, and another bad study by Didier Raoult
On Friday, Prof. Didier Raoult posted another study of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine used against COVID-19. It is a single arm observational study of patients with mostly mild (or even asymptomatic) disease that is painfully uninformative with respect to the question of this treatment's effectiveness. That didn't stop America's Quack Dr. Oz and other grifters from touting Raoult's study, as well as a...
Are hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin an effective treatment for COVID-19?
Saturday morning, President Trump Tweeted a claim that the combination of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine "have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" and hoped that they be "put in use IMMEDIATELY" to treat COVID-19. His claims were based on a single clinical trial out of France. Unfortunately, although it is not implausible that...
Pitfalls in Research: Why Studies Are More Often Wrong than Right
Here is a course guide to episode 9, "Pitfalls of Research", of my YouTube lecture series on science-based medicine.
Milk and Health: The Evidence
A useful review of all the current evidence about milk and health provides a lot of surprises. It shows that current recommendations are flawed and that much of what we have believed is wrong.
Cardiac Stem Cell Transplant
A new study helps put the state of stem cell research into context.
Do dietary supplements affect the survival of cancer patients?
Do dietary supplements offer advantages or risks to breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy?
More evidence that acupuncture doesn’t work for chronic pain
Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo whose real history has been retconned beyond recognition. A new systematic review of systematic reviews of acupuncture for chronic pain highlights that conclusion and catalogues the many weaknesses in the design of acupuncture clinical trials.
Ellura: A Supplement Backed By Evidence
Ellura is a dietary supplement marketed to treat recurrent urinary tract infections. There is promising evidence and a credible mechanism of action, and using it instead of antibiotic prophylaxis could reduce antibiotic resistance.
The Apple Heart Study
A recent study involving the Apple Watch raises some interesting points about modern clinical trials. It also has some implications and conclusions about screening for atrial fibrillation (a. fib).
Spinning a negative acupuncture study: Same as it ever was
Investigators at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reported the results of a trial of acupuncture for xerostomia (dry mouth) secondary to radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. It was a negative trial, but investigators still tried to spin it as positive, but with a twist. There was a large difference between results found at M.D. Anderson and the second site in China....