Talk:Health effects of caffeine/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: --Tea with toast (talk) 19:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Review

First of all, I would like to say that I appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this article. I notice that this is a recently made article that has some devoted editors that have helped shape it. While reading and reviewing, I learned much about the topic of the article, and I thank you for writing it. However, this article has several notable short comings which prevents me from passing it as a good article.

Minor points

I found several minor grammatical errors through out the text, and I took the liberty to do some copy editing. It should be noted that contraction ("it's", "can't", etc.) should not be used in formal writing (that is, in any wikipedia article).

• There are many unsourced statements. I have noted most of them with tags.
• In the introduction, I feel the following statement is misleading or not well written: "...it injects adrenaline into the system to give them a boost, and it manipulates dopamine production in a way that makes them feel good." Caffeine does not "inject" adrenaline, rather it can cause a release of epinephrine. Could you be more descriptive of what "feel good" means?
• The first sentence of the paragraph "Gastrointestinal distress" belongs under "cardiovascular effects"
• The section "Effects of genetics on withdrawal symptoms" has multiple problems making it hard to understand. I am confused by the abbreviations and whether you are referring to adenosine or adrenergic receptors. Please use proper formatting. You might want to ask for help from somebody at WP:WikiProject Biology or WP:WikiProject Medicine for tips on how to clarify the paragraph.
• I am surprised that the genetics section does not have any information about the genetic variation in the cytochrome p450 gene which causes people to metabolize caffeine differently.
• I am surprised that while the article has a section on "caffeine and alcohol", it seems to be out of date. There have been multiple recent news articles about the controversy of caffeinated alcoholic beverages being sold. I believe some drinks have been pulled off the market and there are investigations of safety and talk of such drinks being banned. I believe there are also reports that caffeine can make one feel "less drunk" and therefore cause a person to drink more. I feel there should be at least one sentence mentioning such things.

Major points

• I find that this article lacks many important points that are included in the Caffeine article. This article does not need to duplicate the text found in the main article, but I was expecting that this article would expand on the information found in the main article. Points from that article that should be at least noted in this article:
  • The possible effects of caffeine to cause an increase in miscarriage.
  • Drug interactions of caffeine with other drugs. The Caffeine article mentions paracetamol and fluvoxamine, and there may be others.
  • Mechanisms of ingestion/absorptions. The main article mentions that it can be absorbed through the skin and inhaled.
• The most worrying aspect of this article is that I find evidence of it being biased towards promoting the positive effects. Several reasons:
  • The section "negative effects" does not contain all the negative effects mentioned in the article: the possibility that it may cause peptic ulcers and breast/ovarian cancers, that its addiction can cause withdrawal, that it can complicate type 2 diabetes, and other effects.
  • The inclusion to the sentence "In these studies, the greatest benefits were observed in those who drank coffee for a long period in their lifetime." is likely untrue. That sentence could only apply to epidemiological studies, and I doubt it applies to each and every one of the studies supporting the items in the "Positive effects".

For these reasons, I can not promote the article to GA status. However, I hope that you can apply some of my advice to help improve the article. Happy editing! --Tea with toast (talk) 22:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)