Blog Updates for January 2011

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Jan 14, 2011. In the Urinary Incontinence post added: A study published in 2011 JAMA concluded that 8 weeks of pelvic floor muscle training and bladder control strategies reduced incontinence episodes from an average of 28 per week to 13 per week even among those who had been incontinent for over a year. The addition of biofeedback and pelvic floor electrical stimulation did not result in greater effectiveness. [Full text] [PMID: 21224456] [Prostate Cancer Infolink Blog review].

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Jan 9/2011. We added to: Bradford Hill Criteria of Causation the following example of Reverse Causality: In a 2007 nomogram (see Figure 3a of [Full Text] [PMID: 17513807] and also this online calculator) to predict recurrence after radiation therapy it appears that the risk declines with increasing dosage until dosage reaches about 66 Gray and then strangley the risk increases again from that point onward. This was based on retrospective data and one wonders whether this is reverse causality at work. That is, perhaps the patients who received the highest dosage of radiation did so because they were known to be at higher risk rather than being at higher risk because they got the higher dosage.

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Jan 2/2011. In Can Most Studies be Wrong we add: A particularly interesting and accessible [article] on publication bias appeared in the New Yorker in 2010.