In an article for Medical News Today, Mary Cooke discusses the results of a recent study published in Neurology. The study followed two cohorts in Taiwan for 6 and 9 years to determine how a vegetarian diet impacts risk of stroke and whether said risk is impacted by dietary B12 intake. The study concluded that, in the population of Taiwanese individuals, a vegetarian diet is associated with lower risk of stroke. Further, that dietary B12 may have a negative association with increased stroke risk. Cooke uses the information presented in the research article and well-sourced commentary on its results to display the findings and implications of the study to the layman reader. Cooke accurately reports on the findings of the Neurology study. She explains the intentions, methods, procedure, and results of the study in an effective and condensed manner. All jargon used is clearly defined within the text and all sources and statistics mentioned are cited using in-text hyperlinks. This renders the article extremely clear to read and further research on the subject quite easy. Cooke cites several professional sources throughout the article; Dr. Chin-Lon Lin, an author of the study, as well as J. David Spence and Christy Tangney, a professor at the University of Western Ontario and Rush University, respectively, who wrote an editorial in Neurology on the findings of the study. However, it should be noted that this review is pay-walled. These sources are all reputable and provide two different opinions on the results and methodology of the study. Cooke excels in providing a well-balanced recount of the research. She summarizes the Neurology article quite nicely and integrates cited commentary into her summary. Further, she comments on the possible limitations of the research and potential areas to be explored in the future. Thus, the article provides the reader with a good grasp on the findings of the study without suggesting any unjustified causation. This article has minor short-comings including an abundance of advertisements and a lack of public information on the author of the text. Upon further research, Cooke’s biography and social media can be found. However, the article itself does not provide any information on the author or her past articles.
795,000 people experience a stroke each year, making it the second leading cause of death globally. Given that strokes can result in serious neurological diseases, many studies have been conducted on determining their origin. In this article, Mary Cooke for Medical News Today presents a study from Taiwan that suggests eating a vegetarian diet may lower the risk of having a stroke. For contextual information, the author explains that ischemic strokes result from blood vessels and hemorrhagic stroke results from an arterial bleed in the brain. Preceding the main study of this news story, a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reported that although vegetarians had lower rates of ischemic heart disease compared to meat-eaters, they were more likely to have a stroke. The Taiwan study recruited more than 13,000 participants, split the participants into two groups and tracked the health of one group for 6 years and the other for 9 years. The results of this study showed that vegetarians in both groups had a lower risk of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke than non-vegetarians. The author of this study suggested that there may be a protective mechanism for vegetarians from a stroke. Additionally, it was noted that the conflicting results from the BMJ could be due to the participants’ use of alcohol, a known risk factor for stroke. Cooke does well to state what is known and provides adequate background information of the topic, namely the description on ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke. The results from both studies are presented succinctly with additional notes from the authors including potential confounding factors. Additionally, Cooke includes a comment from third-party researchers on a recent editorial that points could potential flows in the volunteers’ diets. Although the lack of an available link to each research article presents an issue with verification of facts, this article is well written, provides a concise background, adequately describes the studies and concludes succinctly. The views expressed by the reviewers for this article are not endorsed or shared by SciFeye. The interpretation of the review of the news story using the SciFeye Index was done independently by two SciFeye reviewers. We encourage you to conduct your own evaluation of the accuracy and quality of the news story using the Index.
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