What SELECT reported for HbA1c, and from which baseline
A robust, cheap, standardised assay with a specific and well-catalogued set of failure modes, several of which are common in this population.
Pancreatitis
A rare but serious adverse event, its background rate, and how trials adjudicated it.
Why your laboratory interval differs from the one in the textbook
A twelve-analyte panel in a perfectly healthy person has roughly even odds of producing at least one flagged result.
A reference interval is not a target, and a result outside one is not a diagnosis
The arithmetic of the reference change value, worked for the analytes that matter here.
Micronutrient monitoring: which panel, how often, and on whose evidence
A monitoring schedule requires evidence about incidence. For this population, that evidence does not exist.
HbA1c and its lag: what a result three months old is telling you
The assay is not the problem. The interpretation of a lagging integral as a current measurement is the problem.
Measuring more frequently generates more flags and not more information
The argument for a baseline panel is that it makes every subsequent result interpretable. The argument against frequent monitoring is that noise accumulates faster than…
Monitoring intervals, and the case against measuring too often
Every additional analyte raises the probability of a flagged result and lowers the average information content of the panel.
What the upper limit of normal for ALT should be, and why it is not
What the renal and hepatic outcome programmes actually measured, and over what duration.
Why your laboratory interval differs from the one in the textbook
Two sources of noise sit under every number: how reproducible the assay is, and how much the analyte varies within the same person on the same day.
The glycaemic panel before treatment: what is worth measuring and when
The assay is not the problem. The interpretation of a lagging integral as a current measurement is the problem.
Measuring more frequently generates more flags and not more information
The argument for a baseline panel is that it makes every subsequent result interpretable. The argument against frequent monitoring is that noise accumulates faster than…
The out-of-range flag is a statistical convention with a printer attached
The arithmetic of the reference change value, worked for the analytes that matter here.
What a low result means when intake has halved
Reduced intake is a plausible mechanism for deficiency. Reduced absorption is not, and the two are conflated in most of the advice.
HbA1c and its lag: what a result three months old is telling you
The assay is not the problem. The interpretation of a lagging integral as a current measurement is the problem.
What the trials monitored, and what that implies about routine practice
The argument for a baseline panel is that it makes every subsequent result interpretable. The argument against frequent monitoring is that noise accumulates faster than…
What has to change before a change has happened
A flag is a probability statement about a population. It is not a statement about the person holding the printout.
What a low result means when intake has halved
Micronutrient guidance for this drug class is borrowed almost entirely from post-bariatric surveillance, where the anatomy is different and the deficiency mechanisms are not…
Why your laboratory interval differs from the one in the textbook
A twelve-analyte panel in a perfectly healthy person has roughly even odds of producing at least one flagged result.
Rapid weight loss moves eight analytes for reasons that have nothing to do with the drug
A substantial proportion of the abnormal results generated during rapid weight loss are consequences of the weight loss rather than findings about the person.
Vitamin D, adiposity, and a volume-of-distribution problem
Which markers are informative, which are confounded, and which move for reasons unrelated to nutrition.