I know that I could go look up individual studies and their abstracts and try to compile all the data personally but I was wondering if there was a website that did that for me? I’m not a med student or a medical researcher but I would still like to find out information about certain drugs, treatments, ect. For example, I would like to see information from many scientific studies that show the effect of sinus rinses on the common cold/sinus infection. I have tried to google information but it is spread all over the place. Is there a group or organization that compiles all the information and puts it in an easier to understand form rather than journals?
Thanks
P.S. If this is not the right subreddit, could you suggest where to post?
Uptodate patient information is amazing and free. There are two levels of write-ups that can provide pretty nice detail without going into the heaps of jargon-heavy evidence that full uptodate articles can get into.
In addition, doing a PubMed search and at least checking out the abstracts could give you some information. Generally a lot of abstracts are quite straightforward and you can just gloss over the super scientific articles that are beyond your comprehension. “Meta Analysis” research articles would be good to look at–they are summaries of research articles about a given topic and pretty much do the reading for you.
Big hospitals are likely to have information for patients and have their own blogs, as well as the Department of Public Health. Also another place to check out. : )
Medscape (my fave for keeping up to date and overviews on disease states), mayo clinic, NIH, epocrates
Ive found Uptodate is the best to use, but I can only use it when on campus and through VPN… I am going to be sad when I graduate and lose it, lol.
PubMed can be difficult to dig through… But you’ll find some good stuff if you can pinpoint what you’re searching for.
Worst Pills, Best Pills, is an excellent resource by Public Citizen:
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality usually has lay summaries of their reports:
Prescrire International, based in France, is more technical:
The Therapeutics Initiative, based at the University of British Columbia, is also an excellent independent resource, though their reports also tend to be more technical:
