Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

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This page has been mentioned by a media organization: Sarah Shamim, Dwayne Oxford (June 14, 2024). "Wikipedia war: Fierce row erupts over Israel's deadly Nuseirat assault". Al Jazeera English. Retrieved June 14, 2024. Wikipedia was able to address the issue of misinformation about the virus spreading on its platform, however, with projects like Wiki Project Medicine, a community of doctors and scientists,working to correct wrong information.

Please comment at Wikipedia:Teahouse#How should I move Draft:Childhood dementia to the mainspace?, not here. Moving the draft itself [over an existing redirect] when ready is trivial, so the main question I am seeking additional viewpoints to is if Draft:Childhood dementia is indeed ready for mainspace or suggestions for improvement. Thank you, Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 18:29, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

did a few edits[1]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:56, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We at Wiki Med have been working on developing medical calculators which you can see here on EN WP User:Doc_James#Calculator or at mdwiki:Body mass index or mdwiki:CHA2DS2–VASc score. Not sure if there is interest here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:11, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

very useful[2] to add to some articles, IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:51, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Perspiration#Requested move 21 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. – robertsky (talk) 08:02, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have been asked to relay a request for an update to post herniorraphy pain syndrome; the cites are all more than a decade old, and it seems to be an area of active R&D, where expertise would be really useful. Many thanks in advance to anyone who takes this on, or recruits someone who does. HLHJ (talk) 01:28, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like there isn’t a whole lot of literature on the topic but I’ll see what I can do! IntentionallyDense (talk) 02:41, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, IntentionallyDense! HLHJ (talk) 19:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My name is Jeff Levenson and I am a volunteer co-president of the Adult Polyglucosan Body Disease Research Foundation (APBD RF). APBD is a genetic neurodegenerative, glycogen storage disease type IV which often mimics MS. Because of that, most of our patients are misdiagnosed and take on average seven years to be properly diagnosed. I have been working on the APBD Wiki page in hopes of improving awareness about this disease. There is an English and German versions of the APBD page, but we desperately need help on other translations. i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, etc.

Can someone tell me if there a red link index and if it is recommended to use Wikidata platform and/or Wiki Project: medicine to grapple with the challenges of spreading the word about APBD and allied diseases? BabaJuly1982 (talk) 15:49, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia, @BabaJuly1982. Before you request translations, I suggest that you look for some more sources. The main goal is to have the facts be up to date, but also to make it easy for editors to see at a glance that the facts are probably up to date, just by looking at how old the cited sources are. The ideal is to get high-quality sources within the last five years; for rare diseases, it's often necessary to stretch that a bit. Here is a list of newer medical journal articles that might be useful, if you'd like to have a look.

When you feel like it's in good shape, then I suggest that you go to m:Talk:Wiki Project Med and click the "Add topic" button at the top of the page, and leave a note to ask if anyone is coordinating translations at the moment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:BabaJuly1982 yes we at Wiki Project Med have an ongoing translation project. We generally are only translating the leads of articles and for a lead of an article to be deemed ready for translation every sentence must be referenced to a high quality secondary source. Our translation dashboard is here and we have had more than 3,500 translations created by volunteers as a result of this initiative since 2021. Reach out when the lead of this article is ready and we can discuss next steps. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:18, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to have some creep in Category:High-importance medicine articles. Here are a few that I thought should be removed (presumably to Mid-importance, but let me know):

• Alteplase
• Aliskiren
• Amantadine
• Arachidonic acid
• Blue baby syndrome
• Benzodiazepine dependence
• Bifidobacterium
• Bifidobacterium longum
• Clostridium (the genus, not Clostridioides difficile infection)
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
• Economic impact of HIV/AIDS
• Error (not Medical error)
• Friedreich's ataxia
• GI cocktail
• Human T-lymphotropic virus 1
• ICD-10
• Innate resistance to HIV
• List of medicine contamination incidents

The rules are: You tell me what rating you want, and it's okay with me. I've picked these out by scrolling through the first half of the category, and it would actually be extremely helpful and desirable for you to tell me that I'm wrong about any of these that you think should be kept at this level. If you don't have a good feeling for how we usually rate things, then click on the category and scroll around for a few seconds (or read the documentation, but scrolling through the cat will be faster and may be more helpful).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only ones I could even see an arguement for being high priority are benzo dependance and GI cocktail however I have no issues with these being rated mid importance. IntentionallyDense (talk) 13:49, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Oracle Cerner#Requested move 19 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 ^{[𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙺]} 03:18, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:21, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

have started Rwanda Marburg disease outbreak , it should be noted this is the first time this occurs in Rwanda (and in recent years in other countries) please feel free to add/delete, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:32, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Added stuff on the socioeconomic/legal reasons that we don't have a vaccine in production yet. See also economics of vaccines.

I should like to see an analysis of whether the existence of legal monopolies in the biomedical field is a net benefit to taxpayers, because it clearly has enormous negative externalities. This is doubly important because, outside the chemical and pharma sector, patents seem not to be a net benefit even to their owners (in the US, as of 2008;^[1] from a Refdesk query). So the onus is rather on patents to show that they should exist. HLHJ (talk) 02:56, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also started Marburg vaccine, just by copy-pasting from existing articles, because we have Ebola vaccine and did before one was in production, and because organizationally, a central place for that information would be good. HLHJ (talk) 04:00, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sexual disorder#Requested move 30 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Web-julio (talk) 03:26, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've decided to officially ask for a second opinion on the Tumor necrosis factor GA review (page:Talk:Tumor necrosis factor/GA1 and nominator:@AdeptLearner123) I'm mostly looking for second opinions regarding prose, readability, and broadness. Feel free to jump in wherever and offer what suggestions you have! IntentionallyDense (talk) 14:50, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:46, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have no entry for Supraventricular ectopy. Should we, or should it be a redirect? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:20, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is it the same as Ectopic Supraventricular Arrhythmias? I'm not sure that it has to be a page persay but I'm not sure where you would redirect it to either. Did you have any ideas? IntentionallyDense (talk) 14:38, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no medical knowledge; I was looking for the topic as I know someone who was recently diagnosed with SEV. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:32, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that it could be redirected to Ectopic beat. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I raised some concerns over a sentence in Childhood dementia saying: "Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses, a group of lysosomal storage disorders, are thought to be its most common subtype."

Is anyone interested in joining the discussion?

My hope is that we can reach a consensus on whether the sentence is accurate or not. And if not, then what the best course of action is.

Thank you. Irina Rainbow (talk) 18:37, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a disagreement over conventionally wording vs "person first language" phrasing regarding this edit. What's the general consensus on this and is there something in MOS that addresses this?

The long standing phrasing was: A needle and syringe programme (NSP), also known as needle exchange program (NEP), is a social service that allows injecting drug users (IDUs) to obtain clean and unused...

One user came along and keeps putting their preferred version: A needle and syringe programme (NSP), also known as needle exchange program (NEP), is a social service that allows people who inject drugs to obtain clean and unused...

I personally prefer the long-standing version, although I was wondering what the consensus of the project prefers. Graywalls (talk) 02:07, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Graywalls, have you found WP:SUFFER?

You could also address the problem in a different way, e.g., "...allows people to obtain clean and unused... This is intended to reduce the risks associated with injection of recreational drugs" (or something like that). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:36, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, and I see "Many patient groups, particularly those that have been stigmatised, prefer person-first terminology", but no definitive guidance on which should, or shall be used in Wikipedia articles. Graywalls (talk) 02:46, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Non-stigmatizing language is preferable, of course, as is a writing style that is clear, direct, and concise. It is not always possible to achieve all of these desirable things in the same sentence. As for which to prefer in a tradeoff, we have not found it necessary to have a hard and fast rule, and of course one of the fundamental policies is that there are WP:No firm rules anyway.

Personally, if I were going to try to improve that article, I think it would be more productive to focus on the outdated facts instead of the wording of the one sentence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing:, any objection to restoring the original phrasing alongside addressing outdated info? I think it's more concise and gets the point across. Graywalls (talk) 13:42, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone

I have been advised to come to this page and introduce myself. I am part of a team of instructors guiding undergrad students in creating articles on medical topics. These students are from the pharmacy and biomedical science disciplines at the faculty of medicine in our Uni. For various reasons, last semester I was involved in moving articles to the main space. Going forward this part will be handled by a more experienced editor in my location. How this space will be hugely beneficial is in helping us guide our students in writing quality articles.

To give you some background about our process, we begin by showing our students the requested medical article list. There are issues with this list and thanks to some helpful members of this community, I have already been given some suggestions on how to handle this list and ideas for modifying this element of our guidance. Any other suggestions regarding this list or suggestions on how to get our medical students started are welcome! The suggested ideas so far will require some substantial restructuring in our syllabus from assignment design to modification of the assessment rubric which may not be possible for the next cohort. Students go through a 3-month period from topic selection to drafting, peer reviewing to final submission before we move the articles to the main space. We make students submit a downloaded PDF version of their sandbox drafts to Turnitin for plagiarism checking. Their submissions come at the end of the semester, and students tend not to engage in continuous edits once they have completed the course with us despite us encouraging them to do so. We understand well that not all articles will be accepted and we tell students that the best ones will go through.

I have a lot of questions regarding general Wikipedia protocols as well as questions specific to medical articles. Now that I have found this space, I will use it to check our alignments when the course gets going in January and students submit drafts. Nice to meet you here and I look forward to engaging with you. G.J.ThomThom (talk) 02:14, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this note. But first I want you to show off some of the work done by your previous students. Nobody expects a perfect article from any new editor, but yours seem to have done pretty well so far, and you've done a good job of teaching them that material needs citations from the beginning.

If you've got a list of those still in Draft: space, that would also be useful to have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:50, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here you go:

Dorsal pancreatic agenesis

Artificial saliva

X-linked genetic disease

Dermatologic surgical procedure

Acquired hand deformity

Blue light spectrum

Sex and drugs

Face washing

Microneedles

Pregnancy hormones

Catatonic depression

Human chimera

Virus crystallisation

Tissue transplantation

Congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia

High-dose chemotherapy G.J.ThomThom (talk) 03:57, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments @WhatamIdoing G.J.ThomThom (talk) 04:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With the next cohort, I will share excerpts during the drafting phase for comments and suggestions if I need them (very likely!). G.J.ThomThom (talk) 04:19, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this list. I see a couple of them ended up getting merged and redirected to another article, which is fine. Some of these surprise me: How did we not have articles on face washing or high-dose chemotherapy until this year? In general, I think we're missing a lot of "intermediate" level articles: we have Chemotherapy and we have articles on individual drugs and regimens, but we don't have all the articles on general categories.

I know that you and IntentionallyDense are working on a list of possible articles for the next class, which should make things a little easier. Wikipedia:Requested articles/Medicine needs some clean up work. You might also think about topics that are unrequested but still appropriate. For example, we have the general article for Brain tumor, but no article specifically about brain tumors in children, and that's the second most common category of pediatric cancer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone. In Potential renal acid load (PRAL) it appears that this concept is somehow valid and is somehow contradicting: One the one hand the body produces acid which on the other hand does not affect pH of the blood (which is good, as otherwise the wrong food will kill you).

Is there more reliable information about this? Best --Julius Senegal (talk) 17:44, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's an alternative medicine diet about acid-producing foods, and I think that having a good article here might be the best defense against pseudoscientific nonsense creeping in.

@Julius Senegal, there is some information about how PRAL is calculated in this book (start on pg 136, second column, and continues to the next page) and this book might also be useful. PRAL correlates with Net acid excretion.[3] This book and this one describe it in terms of a dietary pattern (fruits and vegetables good; aged cheese bad) for kidney patients. There is a related concept of Dietary acid load (PRAL plus the acid actually in the food [4]).

I'd love it if you'd have a go at expanding that article a bit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The boxed content originally appeared at WP:ENB; please follow up below the box. Mathglot (talk) 17:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion moved here upon request. Please respond to User:G.J.ThomThom's questions about "guiding students in composing medical articles for Wikipedia" below. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You'll want to look over Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Content sections, if you haven't before. The lead for a well-developed article about a disease usually has four paragraphs, and they usually combine some of these elements:

• Definition, cause, and symptoms
• Diagnosis and treatment
• Screening, prevention, prognosis
• Epidemiology, history, cultural information

I've broken this list up to suggest four possible paragraphs, but ►you must use your judgment to pick the right elements. For example, some disease have no treatment and the diagnostic process is simple and boring (e.g., run a lab test), so diagnosis and treatment wouldn't make a good paragraph. Or the cause is unknown and it has no symptoms. In that case, merge, rearrange, or omit whatever doesn't seem important.

I don't think that medication articles follow the same pattern, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology/Style guide#Sections has a few specific details that they recommend including. As a general rule for a Wikipedia article, you can look down the Table of Contents for the article, and the lead ought to say something (sometimes only half a sentence) about most of the sections.

I helped with the recent updates to MOS:LEADLENGTH, and I think that your students could set a goal of having at least 100 words in the lead. That's usually feasible even for an article that isn't very long or well-developed yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you and all noted. A lot has been clarified for me now regarding the lead. G.J.ThomThom (talk) 23:37, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am posting this here instead of on the talk page of the article, because I'd like to get the opinion of a broader base of editors interested in this, rather than just the (likely zero) people who read the talk page of the article in question.

I was reading the article on nicotine and noticed that the "Adverse effects" section was looking very sparse considering the nature of the substance. Particularly the subsection on the effects on the cardiovascular system was suspiciously sparse, given that nicotine is widely known to have an effect on blood pressure and heart rate. I checked an older version of the page from 2019, and back then the "Adverse effects" section was much longer with many paragraphs of comprehensively cited text (did not evaluate the contents of the citations though), including on cardiovascular health. Sure, it wasn't perfect and was in obvious need of cleanup, but the difference to the current article is night and day.

What happened? Given the subject matter, my spidey sense detects a whiff of foul play. I am probably incapable of really doing anything about it myself (far from my field of expertise, and the article seems pretty controversial), but this bothered me enough that I wanted to ask for the opinions of editors with more experience on articles like this. —turdas^{talk - contribs} 19:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Turdas, it looks like there was a sock named User:Westwourd editing that article in 2020, but I thought all of that got reverted. That section had already been re-written by that point. I wonder if the changes you've noticed could be found in the list of edits from this user.

The best thing to do at this point would be to find a really great source and start over from scratch. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]