Effective Research Review - Critical Analysis Of The Study Used To Establish Gluten Threshold

[weluvgators]

The following article from the Celiac Support Association was super interesting to me.  I am trying to digest it all and apologize if it has been posted here before.

 

Open Original Shared Link

 

I am always amazed at how much research our family has had to do to advocate for our health and wellness.

 

In case my link is messed up, the article is:

"Reviewing medical literature:  a primer for those living with Celiac disease

The safety, toxicity or otherwise of gluten...

Author:  Dr Geoff Forbes (MBBS, MD, FRACP) is a Gastroenterologist at Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Australia; and Clinical Professor with the University of Western Australia.  He is a clinician with expertise in immune conditions of the gut and in clinical nutrition.  He is a teacher and researcher, and as he has family members with Celiac disease, he has a first hand knowledge of living with the gluten-free diet."

 

It is so refreshing to have such an advocate for the celiac community.  I just hope Australia heeds his words of wisdom!  I am still astounded at what a difference the strict legislation in Australia has made for our family.  I just pray that it stays that way and that other countries around the world follow their lead.  I think New Zealand currently has the same standards, but am not positive.

 

There is so much good stuff in the article, but I love the commentary on "Interpretation by others of a study after publication", and the first paragraph (repeated in bold as last paragraph of his summary and conclusion) really resonates with me.

 

 

[dilettantesteph]

Thank you for posting this.  I like it that he recommends reading published reports. 

[weluvgators]

I feel a little bit alone in this. Surely there are many of you that cope with celiac by trying to plough through medical research, aren't there? I have a hard time keeping it all straight sometimes. I am not a medical doctor, nor do I want to be in healthcare in any way. While he recommends reading published reports, I get frustrated by the limited access there is to full text articles. Easy to say read the whole thing when you have access to materials that seem to cost a fair bit just to see if you can even decipher the information. How is the general public supposed to get access to the materials to do a proper analysis? Never mind that many times I want to backtrack to the references that may be used in articles too.

I went through the presentation link that was posted by CSA. It seemed like a really cool summary of how to approach analysing medical literature when we can get the full text articles.

Has anyone found a cost effective way to track down medical journal articles when wanting to read them to figure out how they may apply to our own healthcare? Even some of the links posted at celiac.com seem to take me to a login page for medical publications. Am I missing some obvious way to access this stuff?

[dilettantesteph]

I'm not sure about in Australia, but here in the U.S. you can often get journal articles from your local library.  You need to special order them but they get you copies in a few days.  You can also go to the local university library and get access there sometimes.  I agree that it can be a challenge.  Not only is it a challenge to read them and understand them, but it is a big challenge to gain access without high fees.  It would be so nice if our medical professionals could be better at reading them for us, but I think that there is just so much information out there these days that it is hard to keep up, especially for a doctor that treats many conditions.  I am so pleased when I go to discuss recent research with my doctor and find that she has already read it.  She's a keeper.