7 ms·

The article differs substantively from the actual conclusions of the study. This study shows a minor correlation in some bacterial DNA "signatures" in arterial

The article differs substantively from the actual conclusions of the study. This study shows a minor correlation in some bacterial DNA "signatures" in arterial plaque in about 200 people (~40% had the correlated bacteria). The study only included tissues from people who died of heart disease or had surgery related to heart disease. There does not currently appear to be a strong baseline about how widespread this bacterial signature may exist in a broad population regardless of health. In a nutshell there is a slightly interesting idea that deserves further study. That's it.

DaveZale 1y ago
yes from tfa: What Question Should Be Addressed Next? • Could a short‐term antibiotics treatment given at the acute phase affect the outcome of myocardial infarction, and would it be possible to develop new diagnostic imaging and prevention methods for bacterial biofilm?
- lithocarpus 1y ago
  I think the first question to be addressed should be, does the general population have similar prevalence of this bacteria? I didn't read the article but just based on the parent comment, it sounds like this baseline hasn't yet been established. It seems very wrong to start testing antibiotics without first establishing the baseline of whether everyone has this bacteria.
  - DaveZale 1y ago
    another possibility that was floated in the TFA was vaccination. The whole point of the article was to precisely map out a mechanism, beyond that, many possibilities exist for intervention or prevention.
lithocarpus 1y ago
Interesting. So, one could make a similar article saying "Myocardial infarction may be caused by sugar consumption" and support it by analyzing the recent diet of 200 people who died of heart disease and finding that 95% of them recently consumed a lot of sugar.
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  Isn’t it obvious that a heart attack could be caused by a myriad of issues? Sure a bacteria could be a cause. So could be genetics, or an excess of cheeseburgers. A heart ceasing to pump blood effectively is not a singular cause
  - motorest 1y ago
    > Isn’t it obvious that a heart attack could be caused by a myriad of issues? I think you not only missed the point but also are doubling down on your mistake by conflating correlation with causality. You don't conclude that burger craving is caused by owning a car by observing drive-through restaurants.
  - lithocarpus 1y ago
    Exactly, it's complex. "we found some bacteria in people with heart disease, let's try killing the bacteria" is really bad logic. Like another commenter posted it's similar to saying a lot of house fires had fire trucks in front of them, let's do some trials where we destroy some of the fire trucks to see if that helps.
- BigJono 1y ago
  I might be reading parts of it wrong, but I think that's a different sort of thing to the research in the article. Sugar is a very indirect cause of heart attacks, everyone knows that most heart attacks are a culmination of decades of diet and exercise habits. It's still worth researching everything to do with that, but it's pretty low value research because it's hard to draw any actionable conclusions from it other than "eat healthier and exercise", which is already well known. The research in the article is talking about a direct cause. Bacteria exists on arterial plaque, viral infection triggers bacteria to multiply, something about that process causes the plaque to detach and cause a heart attack. If that ends up being a rock solid cause and effect, even for a subset of heart attacks, that could lead to things like direct prevention (anti-virals before the heart attack happens) or changes in patient management (everyone with artery disease gets put far away from sick patients) that could directly and immediately save a lot of lives. The post you replied to was saying that the data from the study isn't as strong as the article and headline make it out to be, which is usually the case. For this one though I'm reading that less as "it's a nothingburger" and more as "it's a small interesting result that needs a lot of follow up".
rawgabbit 1y ago
Minor correlation? P values are small indicating a strong correlation? Quote: Of the bacteria detected, oral viridans group streptococcal DNA was the most common, being found in 42.1% of coronary plaques and 42.9% of endarterectomies. Immunopositivity for viridans streptococci correlated with severe atherosclerosis (P<0.0001) in both series and death from coronary heart disease (P=0.021) or myocardial infarction (P=0.042).
- teraflop 1y ago
  This is a super common misconception, but a small p-value does *not* (necessarily) mean a strong correlation. It means high confidence that the correlation is non-zero.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - rawgabbit 1y ago
    Yes. I understand that. I was questioning the original assertion that there was a “minor” correlation. The p values indicate a correlation. One that is statistically significant.
    - teraflop 1y ago
      Late response, but the whole point is that "statistically significant" doesn't necessarily mean "major", because significance is as much about the experimental design as it is about the thing you're measuring. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that being left-handed is correlated with a 0.001% higher likelihood of accidentally dropping your car keys every time you pick them up. An experiment studying a small sample of people for a month probably wouldn't detect this correlation at all. If you ran the same experiment but carefully monitored every single person in the US around the clock, you would be able to reliably detect it with an extremely small p-value. And yet it's still fair to describe it as an extremely minor correlation.
- raincole 1y ago

DaveZale 1y ago

yes from tfa: What Question Should Be Addressed Next? • Could a short‐term antibiotics treatment given at the acute phase affect the outcome of myocardial infarction, and would it be possible to develop new diagnostic imaging and prevention methods for bacterial biofilm?

lithocarpus 1y ago
I think the first question to be addressed should be, does the general population have similar prevalence of this bacteria? I didn't read the article but just based on the parent comment, it sounds like this baseline hasn't yet been established. It seems very wrong to start testing antibiotics without first establishing the baseline of whether everyone has this bacteria.
- DaveZale 1y ago
  another possibility that was floated in the TFA was vaccination. The whole point of the article was to precisely map out a mechanism, beyond that, many possibilities exist for intervention or prevention.

lithocarpus 1y ago

Interesting. So, one could make a similar article saying "Myocardial infarction may be caused by sugar consumption" and support it by analyzing the recent diet of 200 people who died of heart disease and finding that 95% of them recently consumed a lot of sugar.

monero-xmr 1y ago
Isn’t it obvious that a heart attack could be caused by a myriad of issues? Sure a bacteria could be a cause. So could be genetics, or an excess of cheeseburgers. A heart ceasing to pump blood effectively is not a singular cause
- motorest 1y ago
  > Isn’t it obvious that a heart attack could be caused by a myriad of issues? I think you not only missed the point but also are doubling down on your mistake by conflating correlation with causality. You don't conclude that burger craving is caused by owning a car by observing drive-through restaurants.
- lithocarpus 1y ago
  Exactly, it's complex. "we found some bacteria in people with heart disease, let's try killing the bacteria" is really bad logic. Like another commenter posted it's similar to saying a lot of house fires had fire trucks in front of them, let's do some trials where we destroy some of the fire trucks to see if that helps.
BigJono 1y ago
I might be reading parts of it wrong, but I think that's a different sort of thing to the research in the article. Sugar is a very indirect cause of heart attacks, everyone knows that most heart attacks are a culmination of decades of diet and exercise habits. It's still worth researching everything to do with that, but it's pretty low value research because it's hard to draw any actionable conclusions from it other than "eat healthier and exercise", which is already well known. The research in the article is talking about a direct cause. Bacteria exists on arterial plaque, viral infection triggers bacteria to multiply, something about that process causes the plaque to detach and cause a heart attack. If that ends up being a rock solid cause and effect, even for a subset of heart attacks, that could lead to things like direct prevention (anti-virals before the heart attack happens) or changes in patient management (everyone with artery disease gets put far away from sick patients) that could directly and immediately save a lot of lives. The post you replied to was saying that the data from the study isn't as strong as the article and headline make it out to be, which is usually the case. For this one though I'm reading that less as "it's a nothingburger" and more as "it's a small interesting result that needs a lot of follow up".

rawgabbit 1y ago

Minor correlation? P values are small indicating a strong correlation? Quote: Of the bacteria detected, oral viridans group streptococcal DNA was the most common, being found in 42.1% of coronary plaques and 42.9% of endarterectomies. Immunopositivity for viridans streptococci correlated with severe atherosclerosis (P<0.0001) in both series and death from coronary heart disease (P=0.021) or myocardial infarction (P=0.042).

teraflop 1y ago
This is a super common misconception, but a small p-value does *not* (necessarily) mean a strong correlation. It means high confidence that the correlation is non-zero.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rawgabbit 1y ago
  Yes. I understand that. I was questioning the original assertion that there was a “minor” correlation. The p values indicate a correlation. One that is statistically significant.
  - teraflop 1y ago
    Late response, but the whole point is that "statistically significant" doesn't necessarily mean "major", because significance is as much about the experimental design as it is about the thing you're measuring. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that being left-handed is correlated with a 0.001% higher likelihood of accidentally dropping your car keys every time you pick them up. An experiment studying a small sample of people for a month probably wouldn't detect this correlation at all. If you ran the same experiment but carefully monitored every single person in the US around the clock, you would be able to reliably detect it with an extremely small p-value. And yet it's still fair to describe it as an extremely minor correlation.
raincole 1y ago