[duffpkg]

The article differs substantively from the actual conclusions of the study. This study shows a minor correlation in some bacterial DNA "signatures" in arterial plaque in about 200 people (~40% had the correlated bacteria). The study only included tissues from people who died of heart disease or had surgery related to heart disease. There does not currently appear to be a strong baseline about how widespread this bacterial signature may exist in a broad population regardless of health.

In a nutshell there is a slightly interesting idea that deserves further study. That's it.

[lithocarpus]

Interesting.

So, one could make a similar article saying "Myocardial infarction may be caused by sugar consumption" and support it by analyzing the recent diet of 200 people who died of heart disease and finding that 95% of them recently consumed a lot of sugar.

[brandonb]

This study's main contribution was to identify the specific bacteria, which gives insight into the mechanism behind heart attacks (the antibody the researchers developed was one of their central contributions). So the researchers dissected only people who died of heart disease.

I think a population study to assess the odds ratios of a risk factor on people who die of heart disease vs not would be valuable (but is a very different beast).

[motorest]

> So, one could make a similar article saying "Myocardial infarction may be caused by sugar consumption" (...

One could apply the same flawed logic to claim that propensity for myocardial infarction may cause certain bacterial infections.

[itsoktocry]

Try it and see where you get, since you assume these scientists are so foolish.

[monero-xmr]

Isn’t it obvious that a heart attack could be caused by a myriad of issues? Sure a bacteria could be a cause. So could be genetics, or an excess of cheeseburgers. A heart ceasing to pump blood effectively is not a singular cause

[BigJono]

I might be reading parts of it wrong, but I think that's a different sort of thing to the research in the article.

Sugar is a very indirect cause of heart attacks, everyone knows that most heart attacks are a culmination of decades of diet and exercise habits. It's still worth researching everything to do with that, but it's pretty low value research because it's hard to draw any actionable conclusions from it other than "eat healthier and exercise", which is already well known.

The research in the article is talking about a direct cause. Bacteria exists on arterial plaque, viral infection triggers bacteria to multiply, something about that process causes the plaque to detach and cause a heart attack. If that ends up being a rock solid cause and effect, even for a subset of heart attacks, that could lead to things like direct prevention (anti-virals before the heart attack happens) or changes in patient management (everyone with artery disease gets put far away from sick patients) that could directly and immediately save a lot of lives.

The post you replied to was saying that the data from the study isn't as strong as the article and headline make it out to be, which is usually the case. For this one though I'm reading that less as "it's a nothingburger" and more as "it's a small interesting result that needs a lot of follow up".

[rawgabbit]

Minor correlation? P values are small indicating a strong correlation?

      Quote:  Of the bacteria detected, oral viridans group streptococcal DNA was the most common, being found in 42.1% of coronary plaques and 42.9% of endarterectomies.  Immunopositivity for viridans streptococci correlated with severe atherosclerosis (P<0.0001) in both series and death from coronary heart disease (P=0.021) or myocardial infarction (P=0.042).

[teraflop]

This is a super common misconception, but a small p-value does *not* (necessarily) mean a strong correlation. It means high confidence that the correlation is non-zero.

[raincole]

P value means "if the null hypothesis were true, the probability we would have observed what we actually observed."

It's definitely not the strength of correlation. It's not even the probability that the opposite of the null hypothesis is false!

[DaveZale]

yes from tfa:

What Question Should Be Addressed Next?

• Could a short‐term antibiotics treatment given at the acute phase affect the outcome of myocardial infarction, and would it be possible to develop new diagnostic imaging and prevention methods for bacterial biofilm?

[lithocarpus]

I think the first question to be addressed should be, does the general population have similar prevalence of this bacteria?

I didn't read the article but just based on the parent comment, it sounds like this baseline hasn't yet been established. It seems very wrong to start testing antibiotics without first establishing the baseline of whether everyone has this bacteria.