Alan Gaby, MD: Clinical Advances in Nutrition

Alan Gaby, MD; Craig Gustafson

Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal (IMCJ): The body of literature on nutritional research can include some very contradictory results. Has this discrepancy been addressed by any formal research? Dr Gaby: Well, the research is contradictory. Everybody knows that. The question is: What do you do about that? How do you come to a conclusion? Obviously a lot of times it's an interim conclusion. One of the things that has been done is meta-analyses where research is pooled and researchers come out with a final number. Then, they come up with a conclusion. Some people use meta-analysis to say, "The totality of the research says so and so, and therefore the individual studies are less important." However, many scientists-and I totally agree with this-have pointed out that meta-analyses can lead you in the wrong direction. They assume that the studies are homogeneous: that the designs are the same, that the patient populations are the same, and that the dosages are the same. They are not. So in my opinion, the proper way to analyze any body of research is to look at differences in design, population, dosage, et cetera, between studies. You have to read each study-it takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of effort.

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