Featured topic: coronavirus
On Science-Based Medicine, Jan Bellamy:
Posted “Consumer groups urge feds to act against Mercola and his false COVID-19 claims.” Joseph Mercola “is an alternative health tycoon, quackery promoter, and marketer of a wide range of products, including dietary supplements...As the consumer groups patiently explain, after each description of Mercola’s mendacity, they ‘are not aware of any scientific evidence, let alone properly conducted RCTs, that [the product in question] prevents or treats COVID-19 infection’ or there is ‘no credible scientific evidence’ to support his claims. After discussing previous regulatory actions involving Mercola, they argue that prior cease and desist warnings ‘have been insufficient to prevent this fraud and more action is needed’.”
Wrote “Trump administration announces some COVID-19 tests can skip FDA review, providing new opportunities for dubious lab tests.” “However COVID testing might be affected, I worry that HHS’s taking the FDA out of the picture will embolden labs inventing dubious tests and marketing them to fringe practitioners and scientifically naïve consumers... there are now whole laboratories devoted to CAM testing. CAM practitioners, such as naturopaths, ‘promote and sell a wide range of tests, many of which are of dubious clinical significance’. Some ‘have little or no clinical utility and are widely discredited’. Results ‘are often accompanied by extensive clinical interpretations which may recommend, or be used to justify, unnecessary or harmful treatments’.”
David Gorski:
Wrote “The perils and pitfalls of ‘doing your own research’ about COVID-19 (or any other science).”
Posted “HCQTrial.com: Astroturf and disinformation about hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19 on steroids.”
Wrote “Does convalescent plasma work against COVID-19? Who knows?”
Asked “Can ‘optimizing your metabolism’ through diet prevent or cure COVID-19?” “Certainly, a healthy weight, exercising, eating a healthy diet are all good things for your health. Who knows? They might even lower your risk of severe COVID-19. However, don’t be fooled by overblown claims for what they’ll do for your risk of COVID-19...”
Steven Novella:
Wrote “Russian and other COVID vaccines.”
Posted “Oleandra – the new COVID snake oil,” concerning the chemical oleandrin extracted from the herb Nerium oleander. It has been promoted by Ben Carson and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell. “To take a raw plant-based powerful poison, and promote based upon a single pre-print in-vitro study is scientifically absurd and morally horrible. To do so in the middle of a pandemic is nothing short of malfeasance.” Additional commentary was provided by Jonathan Swan on Axios (“When a biotech executive like Whitney can take his case directly to the president, it casts doubt over the scientific rigor of the drug development process.” Mike Whitney heads the company producing oleandrin.), Igor Derysh on Salon, and Nicole Lyn Pesce on MarketWatch.
Discussed “COVID in children.”
Scott Gavura:
Posted “Dexamethasone and hydroxychloroquine: why randomized controlled trials matter.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:
“Should we bypass phase 3 trials of a COVID-19 vaccine?”
“Sputnik-V: A Russian con job on its COVID-19 vaccine.”
“Cries the antivaxxer: ‘Vegans, don’t take a COVID-19 vaccine because it uses horseshoe crab blood’.”
“Plandemic 2: Electric Boogaloo, or: How Mikki Willis doubled down on COVID-19 conspiracy.” “Subtle, this movie ain’t. Nor is it honest. It’s deceptive in the extreme, pure disinformation. The good thing is that it’s nowhere near as influential as its predecessor.”
“The ‘only 6%’ gambit: The latest viral COVID-19 disinformation.” “The bottom line is that the ‘only 6%’ gambit is disinformation. It’s likely either astroturf or a product of the deranged minds of QAnon conspiracy theorists (or both).”
Edzard Ernst posted:
“The use of Traditional Chinese Medicines to treat SARS-CoV-2 may cause more harm than good.” He noted a letter by Gray and Belessis (Pharmacol Res. 2020;156:104776 Letter) pointing out that some of the herbs being used have as side effects lung damage, which would be particularly dangerous to coronavirus patients.
“The 1st randomised clinical trial of a Chinese herbal medicine for COVID-19.” “One might even say that – pandemic or not – it is irresponsible to conclude from a sample size of 2 x 24 on the safety and efficacy of any therapy – TCM [traditional Chinese medicine] or not.”
May 12 – Adams, Baker, and Sobieraj wrote “Myth busters: dietary supplements and COVID-19” (Ann Pharmacother. 2020;54(8):820-826 Paper). Topics covered include vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, elderberry, and colloidal silver. “Evidence evaluating these supplements in COVID-19 patients is lacking, and providers and patients should not rely on dietary supplements to prevent or treat COVID-19.”
June 3 – “IV therapies and COVID-19: The drip, drip, drip of deceptive claims” was published by Truth in Advertising.
July 23 – Stephen Barrett posted “A skeptical look at Kelly Victory, M.D.” on Quackwatch. “Colleen Victory, M.D. (a/k/a Kelly Victory) asserts that (a) concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic are overblown, (b) wearing a mask does more harm than good, and (c) it is safe to ‘fully return to your lives, without fear and without limitations.’ Her ideas were being spread primarily through a YouTube video that was filled with false information and poor medical reasoning. Following her advice might kill you.”
August 13 – William London wrote “Trump and COVID-19: Population Health Neglect, Hydroxychloroquine Hype, and a Gambler's Fallacy” for Skeptical Inquirer.” “I am wary of anything offered with a sales pitch of ‘What do you have to lose?’”
Other topics
Best of the blogs, August – on Science-Based Medicine, Scott Gavura:
Posted “Vitamin D supplements do not reduce the risk of depression.” “This large randomized controlled trial provides compelling evidence that vitamin D supplementation has no effect on the risk of depression (or depressive symptoms) or its recurrence in adults aged 50 or older. There is no longer an argument to be made that ‘more research is needed.’ This study is probably enough.”
Harriet Hall:
Wrote “The recipe for making stupid videos.” She analyzed a promotional video for VitalFlow, a product for prostate problems. “The VitalFlow video could serve as a template for making deceptive videos about dietary supplements. It checks all the red flags: the white coat, the over-the-top emotional language, the gross exaggerations, the conspiracy theories, the testimonials, treating the underlying cause rather than just the symptoms, doctors only interested in profit, the lack of clinical studies, the inaccuracies, the obviously false statements, the mis-spellings, the ‘buy now’ pressure, the ‘supplies won’t last,’ and much more.”
Discussed "Visual stress." “The Opticalm Clinic claims to diagnose and treat visual stress with colored lenses and other aids. Visual stress is a poorly defined, questionable condition and Opticalm’s claims are not backed by scientific evidence.”
Posted “The Hallelujah Diet.” The diet “focuses on a biblical, vegan plant-based diet where 85% of the food you eat should be eaten in its raw natural state.” “I have to agree with Stephen Barrett that following the Hallelujah Diet makes no sense and is very foolish.”
Critiqued the Netflix series (Un)Well. “Rather than explaining science, they offer slick journalism, appeals to emotion, and unthinking gullibility. The best journalism aims to inform, educate, and make a better world. This Netflix series is not good journalism. It is biased and will undoubtedly mislead many viewers. Two thumbs down.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac”:
Posted “Joe Mercola: Celebrating 23 years of promoting quackery and antivaccine misinformation.”
Edzard Ernst:
Posted “Spinal manipulation is not the best therapy for non-specific chronic neck pain: a randomized controlled trial.” The paper discussed is Bernal-Utrera et al., Trials. 2020;21(1):682 Paper. The “results are not surprising. They confirm what I have been pointing out repeatedly, namely that, because exercise is cheaper and has less potential for harm, it is by far a better treatment for chronic neck pain than spinal manipulation.”
Discussed a review of mistletoe for quality of life of cancer patients performed by Harald Walach. “…only a year ago another German team of researchers conducted a similar review and came to a very different conclusion.”
Commented on two sets of draft guidelines from UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on treatments for chronic primary pain (CPP). Part 1 dealt with acupuncture. “As acupuncture has all the features that make a perfect placebo (slightly invasive, mildly painful, exotic, involves touch, time and attention), I see little point in evaluating its efficacy through studies that make no attempt to control for placebo effects. This is why the sham-controlled studies are central to the question of acupuncture’s efficacy, no matter for what condition…I fail to see how NICE can conclude that CPP patients should be offered acupuncture.” Steven Novella also commented on Science-Base Medicine. “Acupuncturists don’t just use acupuncture for pain, they use it for hundreds of indications, all unproven, up to and including serious illnesses like cancer…By recommending acupuncture for pain, based upon very weak evidence of a clinically tiny effect in the face of a lack of a plausible mechanism, you are throwing patients to the wolves.” Part 2 concerned manual therapy. “Manual therapy is a very heterogeneous group of interventions. Massage and spinal manipulation, for instance, are very different in almost every respect. It would therefore be more constructive to name the techniques more precisely. Evaluating them together makes little sense to me and is hardly different from an assessment of all pharmacological treatments. Much more important is the fact that the document lacks an assessment of harms.”
Wrote “Waldorf schools are a danger to public health.” In California, their students have exceptionally high rates of personal belief exemptions for vaccinations. “As the world is hoping for the arrival of an effective vaccine against the corona virus, these figures should concern us.”
Posted twice concerning reviews of homeopathy. The first concerned acute respiratory tract infections in children (King et al. Acad Pediatr. 2020, online ahead of print Abstract), which concluded that “The effectiveness for homeopathic remedies for childhood ARTIs is not supported in higher quality trials.” “So, next time you hear a homeopath claim that his/her treatments are especially good for kids, be warned: the claim merely supports his/her income but not your child.” The second concerned urological disorders (Nayak et al. J Complement Integr Med. 2020, online ahead of print Abstract). “The conclusion of the review is confusing; essentially, the authors admit that there is no good evidence for homeopathy as a treatment of urological conditions. Yet they seem to be bending over backwards to hide this message the best they can.”
Wrote “Intravenous high-dose vitamin C therapy: what are the dangers?” “...IV vitamin C has been associated with adverse effects, some of which are serious.”
Discussed new results indicating that mindfulness can worsen depression and anxiety.
Posted “Alcohol hangover: is L-cysteine the solution?” “...it is easy to see that the average effects were determined by just a few data points. Personally, I would therefore feel uncomfortable with these conclusions and insist on further research before issuing far-reaching recommendations. My discomfort would increase significantly considering that the sponsor of the study was the manufacturer of the L-cysteine supplement being tested...”
Critiqued a study of Reiki for chronic pain. With no control group, the study could not determine effectiveness.
Wrote “Treatment of hypertension with so-called alternative medicine (SCAM): a summary of systematic reviews.”
Introduced his new book, Chiropractic: Not All That It’s Cracked Up to Be.
Posted “No convincing evidence that aromatherapy is beneficial for people with dementia.” A new Cochrane review was discussed (Ball et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020;8(8):CD003150 Abstract).
Discussed a review of acupuncture for delayed-onset muscle soreness (Chang et al. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2020;2020:5864057 Paper). “The very small average effect that does emerge originates mainly from one outlier...In essence, this means that there is no good evidence that acupuncture is effective at reducing pain caused by DOMS.”
Posted concerning a review of treatments for osteoarthritis pain. Glucosamine and chondroitin were found to provide pain relief, but when only publicly funded studies were considered, there was no benefit.
Wrote a three-part series entitled “Heedless Homeopathy.” “Many people think that homeopathy is akin to herbal medicine and that its remedies are based on plants. This could not be further from the truth. Herbal remedies are not diluted, while homeopathics are – usually to the point where not a single molecule is left of the mother tincture. Some homeopathic remedies are clearly plant-based, but many are not. In fact, homeopathics can be made from just about anything. In this series of posts, I intend to list a few surprising materials that are used to produce homeopathic remedies.” Part 1 lists remedies based on different forms of radiation, such as “Mobile Phone 1800MHz.” Such remedies are difficult to reconcile with the proposed mechanism of “nanoparticles” for homeopathy, since there are no particles. Part 2 was entitled “Revolting remedies,” such as “tiger urine.” Part 3 concerned remedies based on various types of water (such as “Aqua Victoria Falls”), which are therefore water diluted with water. By the logic of homeopathy, “Lourdes Water” should give you all diseases!
August – An editorial by White was entitled “Dietary Supplements Pose Real Dangers to Patients” (Ann Pharmacother. 2020;54(8):815-819 Full text). “The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act led to a flood of poor-quality dietary supplements…Microbial and heavy metal contamination, adulteration with synthetic drugs (including drugs banned from the United States), substituting herbs, and fraudulently specifying ingredients on the label have all occurred.”
August – a review by Samuelson and others (J Altern Complement Med. 2020;26(8):680-690 Abstract) concluded that “The current body of literature suggests a potential therapeutic benefit of lavender essential oil in wound healing. However, standardization of the chemical composition and additional high-quality human clinical trials are needed to further evaluate the safety and efficacy of lavender essential oil in clinical practice.”
August 1 – The American Gastroenterological Association released “Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Role of Probiotics in the Management of Gastrointestinal Disorders” (Gastroenterology. 2020;159(2):697-705 Full text) Announcement. Scott Gavura discussed the guidelines on Science-Based Medicine. “There is a lack of evidence to support the use of probiotics for digestive conditions like C. difficile infection, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome. The AGA recommends against probiotic use for these conditions. And importantly, there is moderate evidence that probiotics do not improve the treatment of acute infectious gastroenteritis in children. However, the AGA found that there is evidence to suggest that probiotics may be useful in other, very specific clinical circumstances. Given the variety of species, strains, and manufacturing methods, it’s not possible to extrapolate across different products to assume that one will provide the same benefits as another.” An accompanying Commentary (Khoruts et al. Gastroenterology. 2020;159(2):409-413) discussed the guidelines. See also March 4 Cochrane review below.
August 11 – Ferreira and others reported “Acute Severe Liver Injury Related to Long-Term Garcinia cambogia Intake” (ACG Case Rep J. 2020;7(8):e00429 Paper). Hydroxycitrate, the active ingredient in Garcinia, has been used in some weight loss supplements linked to liver injury.
August 24 – A review by Mansouri et al. (BMC Cancer. 2020;20(1):791 Paper) concluded that “curcumin reduces the side effects of chemotherapy or radiotherapy, resulting in improving patients’ quality of life. A number of studies reported that, curcumin has increased patient survival time and decreased tumor markers’ level.”
Additions to previous months
January – A review by Askarpour and others (Arch Med Res. 2020;51(1):82-94 Paper) found that “L-carnitine supplementation showed beneficial hepato-protective effects on circulating liver enzymes.”
March 4, April 10, and April 7 – Three Cochrane reviews discussed various supplements. One concerned probiotics for maintenance of remission in ulcerative colitis (Iheozor-Ejiofor et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020;3(3):CD007443 Abstract) concluded “The effectiveness of probiotics for the maintenance of remission in ulcerative colitis remains unclear. This is due to low‐ to very low‐certainty evidence from poorly conducted studies, which contribute limited amounts of data from a small number of participants.” The second was on “Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation for cystic fibrosis” (Watson et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020;4(4):CD002201 Abstract). “This review found that regular omega‐3 supplements may provide some limited benefits for people with cystic fibrosis with relatively few adverse effects: however, the quality of the evidence across all outcomes was very low. The current evidence is insufficient to draw firm conclusions or recommend routine use of these supplements in people with cystic fibrosis.” The third review was “Vitamin C supplementation for prevention and treatment of pneumonia” (Padhani et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020;4(4):CD013134 Abstract). The authors wrote, “Due to the small number of included studies and very low quality of the existing evidence, we are uncertain of the effect of vitamin C supplementation for the prevention and treatment of pneumonia.”
July 17 – A review of niacin for type 2 diabetes (Xiang et al. Medicine (Baltimore). 2020;99(29):e21235 Paper) concluded: “This study found that niacin supplementation could improve lipid profiles without affecting the glycemic levels for patients with T2DM. Additional large-scale RCTs should be conducted to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of niacin supplementation.”
July 30 – Perez-Sanchez and others wrote “Safety Concerns of Skin, Hair and Nail Supplements in Retail Stores” (Cureus. 2020;12(7):e9477 Paper). “This survey of ‘dermatology’ supplements available in local retailers raised several safety concerns, including potential interactions, teratogenicity risks, a lack of independent third-party testing, lack of warning labels, and nutrient ‘overdosing’.”