Talk:Alzheimer's disease/ToDo

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The FAC discussion archive is replicated below for use as a ToDo list. This is NOT the official FAC discussion.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:33, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]


The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 03:57, 12 June 2008 [1].

Alzheimer's disease[edit]

I'm nominating this article for featured article because it has undergone a massive copyediting, review, fixes to references, discussions, and MOS fixes. It meets the criteria for WP:MEDMOS, is well-written, comprehensive, utilizes verifiable statements from reliable sources, is neutral and has been stable for two or three months. It should be a Featured Article. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 21:36, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Patients will ultimately not be able to perform even the most simple tasks independently. Finally, deterioration of muscle and mobility will develop, leading the patient to become bedridden[38] and to lose the ability to feed oneself[39] I think (per MOS?) that references are supposed to come after punctuation.
  • I also see two {{fact}} tags that need rectifying.
  • Is there meant to be a {{citeweb}} template in the middle of this sentence? "An example of such a vaccine under investigation is ACC-001[190]Study Evaluating Safety, Tolerability, and Immunogenicity of ACC-001 in Subjects With Alzheimer's Disease.." naerii - talk 23:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • "for which there is currently no known cure" - you can drop the "currently", it's assumed
  • "with a behavioral assessment and cognitive tests" - "with a....(plural word)" needs a grammar fix
  • The last para of the lead is kinda short... and there isn't much on Social effects. You could beef it up a bit with that.
  • Not sure there's much else to say. That part of the article is so small that I think the lead represents it sufficiently. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 18:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is from the lead. I'll try and get some more done as I get the time. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 01:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments * Hm. Is Heathlink put out by the University of Wisconsin? Might want to put work=Heathlink and publisher=University of Wisconsin for those references.

  • Current ref 47 "Families shed light on likely causative gene for Alzheimers" is lacking last access date and publisher, plus any other bibliographical information.
Can we nominate Pubmed for godhood? (grins) Ealdgyth - Talk 01:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that would be outside of Wikipedia recommendations, so you would have to do it off-wiki. Sorry.  :) OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 06:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current ref 99 the Alzheimers Association page "Vitamin E" is lacking a last access date
  • I'm deleting this reference, and the statement. I've done a search on PubMed, and I'm just not finding anything that supports this statement. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 23:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current ref 107 "Long-term use of ibuprofen may reduce the risk.." is lacking last access date
  • Same for current ref 108 "Ibuprofen linked to Reduced Alzheimer's Risk Washington Post"
  • Current ref 156 "Study Evaluating Safety, Tolerablity and..." is lacking publisher and last access date at the least, as well as any other available bibliographical information
  • Current ref 169 "Neurological disorders Public Health Challenges" is lacking a last access date
  • Same for current ref 174 "Water sanitation in health..."WHO
  • Current ref 182 "The MetLife Study of Alzheimer's Disease..." is lacking publisher
  • Current ref 189 "Pauli Michelle, Pratchett announces he has Alzheimers'.. is lacking the publisher
  • Current ref 190 "Pratchett, Terry and embuggerance" is lacking last access date
Sources look good. Links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:42, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh. Normally it's good form at FAC to let the person leaving the comments/concerns strike their comments when they feel they have been addressed. But I'm not that picky about it, it looks like you took care of these. Just the first one, which is more a suggestion than a requirement. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:18, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments, (for now): I have made some minor edits,[2] Please check that I haven't introduced any errors.

  • There is no mention of 24 million sufferers in the body of the article. - now 26.5 and covered.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:28, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • often initially thought to be caused by aging or stress by the sufferer Is "by" the correct preposition?
  • The second paragraph of the Lead could be split into two sentences. — and resequenced
  • The cause and progression of Alzheimer's disease is not well understood Is it correct to treat cause and progression as singular?
No. FixedLeadSongDog (talk) 13:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Possible causes and potential cures of the disease Cures "of" the disease?
  • before a person fulfills clinical criteria of diagnosis I was tempted to put "the" before "criteria" and in some other places, is dropping them US english? Fine. "Criteria" is the plural of "Criterion", It has no need of the definite article.
  • There are some difficult words: visoconstructional, subcapacities, could you help the reader out with these?
  • In the last stage of Alzheimer's disease all human behavior is likely to become entirely automatic. - I'm not sure what is meant by "automatic".
  • Plaques are made of a small peptide (39 to 43 amino acid residues) called beta-amyloid. - Should this be Plaques are made of small peptides, or is there just one per plaque?
  • I wasn't sure about batteries - does it mean "range of tests"?
  • This is hard to understand At present contradictory results in global studies, incapacity to prove causal relationships between risk factors and the disease, and possible secondary effects indicate a lack of specific measures to prevent or delay the onset of AD.
  • drugs commonly given to Alzheimer's patients with behavioural problems are modestly useful in reducing aggression and psychosis, but are associated with serious adverse effects, such as cerebrovascular events, movement difficulties or cognitive decline, that do not permit their routine use. - Is there a contradiction here?
  • This sentence adds nothing to the article: There are also many basic investigations attempting to increase the knowledge on the origin and mechanisms of the disease that may lead to new treatments.
  • The role of metals needs more explanation.
  • The word patients is overused, could we have some more people?
Still needs work LeadSongDog (talk) 18:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are lots of empty DOI= , (but this is only a minor issue). GrahamColmTalk 15:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments regarding images:

**Image:Auguste D aus Marktbreit.jpg needs a verifiable source per WP:IUP.

    • Would uploading the version of the picture from Figure 3 of a reprint of a lancet article ( http://alzheimer.neurology.ucla.edu/pubs/alzheimerLancet.pdf. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)) work? -Optigan13 (talk) 05:52, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

**Image:Memantine.png needs a verifiable source.

    • Image:Alzheimer's disease - MRI.jpg - the policy pages referenced in {{PD-USGov-NASA}} address only information hosted on JSC (Johnson Space Center) and JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) websites. This image is from a GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) website (I didn't see an equivalent policy for this prefix). The notice page for this tutorial explicitly indicates that some images are not in the public domain. The tutorial does not appear to claim to be a work of NASA; indeed, the forward introduces the primary author as "a former NASA Goddard employee" (emphasis added). Where is the basis for the claim that this image was created by NASA? Why would the National Aeronautics and Space Administration be creating images pertaining to Alzheimer's? ЭLСОВВОLД talk 21:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, I'm afraid. In March, I reviewed the epidemiology and left comments on Talk:Alzheimer's disease#A review. The numbers simply don't line up with the sources; the article fails WP:V. I won't repeat that review here but I've checked, and apart from the addition of one sentence and some minor copyediting, none of the facts or sources have changed since then. The problems start with opening sentence of this article, which cites a source I have now been able to get hold of (I didn't have it during my earlier review). The article beings "...Alzheimer's, is the most common cause of dementia, afflicting 24 million people worldwide." The highly respected paper that is cited gave a prevalence figure for dementia. The paper's authors state "We combined the sexes, and focused on dementia prevalence rather than subtypes such as Alzheimer’s disease because most prevalence data was neither gender-specific nor distinguished by subtype." Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, vascular dementia is second (though that WP article and this web page says vascular dementia is first in parts of Asia). This is only one of several issues I found with the epidemiology.
In addition to these sourcing issues, I also noted that the article didn't help the reader locate Alzheimer's within the various forms of dementia (the relative prevalence of each kind, different symptoms, different causes, etc). One other warning-sign is the number of sources cited only within the lead. This can indicate the lead is not merely a summary of the body, but has been written independently. That 24 million figure isn't repeated in the Epidemiology section, nor is the global prevalence paper cited later. Colin°Talk 13:20, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Use en dashes, per WP:DASH, for page ranges, such as at "pages=527-532", "pages=686-694", many in the "The components of a..." paragraph, etc.

Gary King (talk) 16:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose *"Short-term memory", a key concept in this topic, is linked to in the lead, and nowhere satisfactorily explained in the article, IMO. The STM article that is relied on opens with this:

"Short-term memory, sometimes referred to as "primary," "working," or "active" memory, is said to hold a small amount of information for about 20 seconds. Estimates of short-term memory capacity vary – from about 3 or 4 elements (i.e., words, digits, or letters) to about 9 elements: a commonly cited capacity is 7±2 elements. In contrast, long-term memory indefinitely stores a seemingly unlimited amount of information."

    • I thought "working memory" had become the more acceptable technical term over the past 15 years.
    • Where did they dredge up the 20-second bit? It's not referenced in that article, and further down there's mention of 30 seconds. I'm more comfortable with a much shorter time-span in defining WM, and there's increasing evidence in any case that the boundary between WM and LTM is rather fuzzy.
    • Miller's 1956 "seven plus or minus two items" notion has been not so much debunked in the past five years as shown to be simplistic. That is, the number depends on quite a few variables.
  • Prose: I'm afraid it doesn't pass muster. Not nearly. Here are my musings from part of the lead.
    • "Gradually the sufferer loses minor, and then major bodily functions, until death occurs." The last three words are odd, and "occurs" is the most redundant part of this phrase.
    • "Although the symptoms are common, each individual experiences the symptoms in unique ways"—Here, "common" means shared across sufferers, I presume. It's going to be taken as meaning "frequent" my many readers initially. And what about "many individuals experience a unique set of symptoms".
    • "The duration of the disease is estimated as being between 5 and 20 years.[6][7]"—What does "is estimated" add when you've provided the refs that contain the estimate? "as being" --> "at".
  • "memory-loss"—unsure that this needs a hyphen. Same for "less-prevalent".

*"the physician or healthcare specialists will confirm the diagnosis with behavioral assessment and cognitive tests, often followed by a brain scan." Not in Burma or Zimbabwe they won't. Why is one singular and the other plural? A little prescriptive, the "will".

  • "The cause and progression of Alzheimer's disease is not well understood, but is associated with plaques and tangles in the brain." I don't like the "but".
  • This sentence is bad for four reasons: "Possible causes and potential cures of the disease have been conjectured, with varying evidence supporting each claim." TONY (talk) 10:54, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments, ok, needs some work. I will try to copyedit what I can as I go, unless there is something which needs discussion. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • In australia, physician usually refers to an Internal Medicine specialist (eg what neurologists, gastroenterologists, respiratory phsyicians etc. are). Dx would be confirmed by a geriatrician, psychogreriatrician or neurologsit here too, and we should note that somewhere. Not sure if it is the same in the US. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would consider withdrawing this FAC, but it won't get attention otherwise. I know there are a lot of comments from Tony, Colin and yourself, but I think they are actionable items, which can be fixed. It deserves to be an FA article, and I think with a week or two of focus from me, you and anyone else I can beg or bribe to help, we can get it close to FAC. In my experience, if we get it close, Tony and SandyGeorgia usually sweep in and do the final tune-up. I have to get my fingernails dirty. If you can help, I'll eat a mushroom. But only one. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 18:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • ok ok, I will try to get in there a bit. Got a nasty cold currently, wet and cold winter here...Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on images (apologies for any overlap with comments above)

Kelly hi! 00:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other comments from talk[edit]

I' am reviewing sections of talk to find any other useful comments that have to be addressed.

For the moment from Colin about epidemiology and prevention:

  • "The role of metals in the disease is also controversial." This is too vague to be helpful. One assumes the "role" is a negative one but it isn't made clear (e.g., perhaps some metal supplement is supposed to prevent AD). Aluminium is the most commonly suspected metal so should be highlighted. The citation lists three sources. Of these, (Rondeau, 2000) is primary research and probably should be dropped in favour of a more recent review. (Shcherbatykh, 2007) looks good from the abstract but I've no way to judge. I think you need to expand this sentence indicating the lack of causal evidence but noting "elevated levels of these metals in the brain may be linked to the development or progression of AD". (Santibáñez, 2007) also looks interesting from the abstract and covers several risks such as solvents, EMP, pesticides, lead and aluminium. However, its focus is to examine the quality of the research rather than to come to any conclusion. Its value as a source for this article is less certain -- but I haven't read the full text.
  • For such a common disease, I'd expect the epidemiology section to be more comprehensive than this. I'd like to know whether the disease affects all ethnic groups equally and all countries equally (e.g, rich vs poor). The gender difference isn't adequately covered. Has the epidemiology of Alzheimer's changed over the years, and if so, is that purely down to age-population changes in society.
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