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Re: are things related
From: LF (anonymous@obgyn.net)
Thu, 2 Aug 2001 08:12:15 -0500 (CDT)
Well put, Renee. Everyone of us should read this from time to time. :)
...LF...
At Wed, 01 Aug 2001, Renee wrote:
>
>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
>
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