Tag: blood tests
TB Or Not TB? Don’t Rely on a Blood Test
TB can't be diagnosed with a blood test.
A Blood Test for Fibromyalgia?
The FM/a test is advertised as a definitive test to diagnose fibromyalgia. It isn't definitive. It is expensive. It has not been shown to change patient outcomes.
Everlywell: At-Home Lab Tests That Don’t Make Sense
EverlyWell offers 34 at-home tests for everything from IgG tests for food sensitivities to a Sleep and Stress test. Most of them make no sense and are likely to mislead customers.
Experts slam CAM lab tests, call for better regulation
Experts review the evidence and find that common CAM lab tests have "little or no clinical benefit" and are "a potential risk to patient safety." Regulatory reform is urgently needed to protect the public.
The rise and inevitable fall of Vitamin D
It’s been difficult to avoid the buzz about vitamin D over the past few years. While it has a long history of use in the medical treatment of osteoporosis, a large number of observational studies have linked low vitamin D levels to a range of illnesses. The hypothesis that there is widespread deficiency in the population has led to interest in measuring...
“Liquid biopsies” for cancer screening: Life-saving tests, or overdiagnosis and overtreatment taken to a new level?
I’ve written many times about how the relationship between the early detection of cancer and decreased mortality from cancer is not nearly as straightforward as the average person—even the average doctor—thinks, the first time being in the very first year of this blog’s existence. Since then, the complexities and overpromising of various screening modalities designed to detect disease at an early, asymptomatic...
Too Much Information!
Some people would like to manage their own health care without having to depend on a doctor. They consult Google, diagnose themselves, and treat themselves. The Do-It-Yourself trend in lab tests continues apace. Without a doctor’s order, patients can get legitimate and/or questionable lab tests directly from various companies such as Any Lab Test Now and Doctor’s Data (which has sued Stephen...
What is disease? Diabetes, diagnosis, and real science
How do we know if people are sick? First, a disease is defined, then we check patients against the criteria. Though it sounds simple, it's not always.