February sees five new entries in the top 10 most read articles. At number one this month is an experimental vignette study investigating why minority ethnic groups report poorer primary care experience in patient surveys. Burt and colleagues designed an experiment in the UK to determine whether South Asian people rate simulated GP consultations the same or differently from White British. The findings suggest that the lower scores reported by Pakistani patients in national surveys represent genuinely worse experiences of communication compared to the White British majority.
Making its way up to the top and catching significant online attention, is a systematic review exploring whether researchers’ conflicts of interest are adequately reported in publications related to psychological therapies. The authors show that non-financial conflicts of interests, especially the inclusion of own primary studies and researcher allegiance, are frequently seen in systematic reviews in the field of psychology.
At number five, another systematic review and meta-analysis exploring the connections between caesarean sections and for-profit status of hospitals. Hoxha and colleagues establish that regardless of women’s risk and contextual factors, private for-profit hospitals are more likely to perform caesarean interventions to women as compared with non for profit hospitals. The authors recommend examining the incentive structures of for-profit hospitals to set strategies that encourage appropriate provision of caesarean sections.
Other new entries on February include two research papers looking at adolescent’s behaviours. The first one is an interesting epidemiological study concluding that brainy adolescents are at a reduced risk of cigarette smoking, but are more likely to drink alcohol regularly and use cannabis. The second on is a qualitative study exploring the views and experiences of young people about their school-based sex and relationship education.
The two most read articles the previous month, systematic reviews by Ravnskov et al. and Fenton et al., stay up in the ranking at the second and third positions respectively. January’s highlight article, a cohort study by Anick Bérard and colleagues indicating that antidepressants increase the risk of a wide range of organ-specific malformations, continues halfway through the ranking. Also, an enlightening survey by Boulton and colleagues reporting the unacceptably high amount of sugars hidden in drinks marketed to children continues to be highly read.
Finally, the cross-sectional study by Murdoch and colleagues investigating the lack of evidence and efficacy, and potential harmful effects, of a clinic website in Canada offering naturopathy, homeopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture to treat serious conditions such as allergy and asthma, continues to grow in popularity online. In light of the results, the authors call for a policy response to safeguard the public interest. We would like to take this opportunity to direct you to: Should doctors recommend homeopathy?
*Most read figures are based on pdf downloads and full text views. Abstract views are excluded.