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are things relatedFrom: Renee (anonymous@obgyn.net)Wed, 01 Aug 2001 17:23:22 -0700
It seems that every time someone says they have some other symptom or medical problem, someone else says they do too, and people assume it must be related. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes it is a known connection, such as acanthosis nigrans, due to the insulin problems. Other times there may be an indirect and not so obvious relationship. One example lately may be the person who said that she was on steroids for her asthma, and later developed PCOS symptoms. There might be a connection there. The proposed relationship made sense. It is definitely an area I'd love an epidemiologist study. However, there are other cases when it is likely just a simple case of intersecting subsets. If you remember your high school geometry, you did those exercises with sets, drawing circles to encompass sets and subsets. There will be people who have disease A, and people who have disease B. Some people will have both, some will have neither, some will have only one. Just because a couple people have both, doesn't mean they are related. One person reported that they were diagnosed with both asthma and PCOS at the same time in her teens, and thought that they must be related because someone else has both, though the onset times and treatments were different. Sometimes people, even epidemiologists, make errors of association. There is a classic study that looked at the relationship between bladder cancer and drinking coffee. They found that those who drank the most coffee had higher bladder cancer rates than those who didn't drink coffee. So, coffee was blamed for bladder cancer. They later examined the data more thorougly, and saw that those who drank the most coffee also smoked, and those that didn't drink coffee didn't smoke. It was more likely the tobacco that was influential in the cancer development than the coffee. But, again, it didn't show causation, only association. There are a lot of things we don't know about PCOS. However, it's getting frustrating to see people link everything to PCOS, and I think it does a disservice to the women out there who are looking for answers. This is definitely avenue for more exploration. An epidemiolgist looking for a group of people to study would be wise to turn to PCOSupport; there are so many women here wanting to help and understand things more. Odds ratios and relative risks could be determined for many different symptoms. Then, we might have a clearer idea of what is and is not related. Renee
Bonnie wrote:
>
-- Renee Cordrey, MSPT, MPH, CWS---
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