When it comes to chronic back pain, “any single treatment approach is unlikely to prove helpful to all or even most patients,” as an editorial accompanying the study explained. This includes yoga.
As the study abstract states, “none of the examined therapies provided optimal acute analgesia.” That point didn’t make it into this story, which relied heavily on the news release.
Unfortunately, this article glosses over the measured benefits, the costs, the harms–and much more.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to bring a claim out of the shadows of website marketing and lone-wolf clinics and use the skills of reporting to inform a fairly wide audience what’s what with an unproven therapy.
From what we can tell, there’s really not much high-quality data on this procedure–despite the FDA approval.
The story would have benefited greatly from at least one source who isn’t involved in the cognitive-enhancement movement.
Less speculation about benefits for humans, and more details about what was actually studied in mice, would have improved this story.
To its credit, the story did include some comments from an independent expert who discussed how the vaccine–if it ever comes to market–would not be a “panacea” for heroin addiction.
Systematic, Criteria-Driven
How to Make Sense of Medical Studies in the News by @stacyfsimon1 with a shout out to @HealthNewsRevu https://t.co/n3Xx3Z8PWj
Many examples of this documented in our reviews of university news releases @HealthNewsRevu https://t.co/r83LIdGhgN https://t.co/oQd4ZsSyG2
Tips for Understanding Studies
