Best Medical Journal to Consume?

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HealthNombreUno

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Hello all!
I am currently a pre-med student and like to read research articles and general topics in medicine often. Since I am not a professional and do not fully understand medical jargon quite yet, what would be the best journal for me to subscribe to and consume for my own personal interests?

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I think Nature has pretty soft, tasty pages. I would consider consuming that.

On a possibly more related note, I would sign up for newsletters from the ACP/JAMA/APA or whatever specialty areas you're interested in. These newsletters tend to have links to 'hot' topics and interesting studies that are mostly relevant to what's going on in medicine. I think most of these should be available to undergrad students.
 
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I do not recommend consuming any medical journals, as the paper isn't the best for your digestive tract and the ink may be toxic.

Seriously though, JAMA is probably a decent place to start as it's a weekly (bi-weekly?) journal that covers a variety of fields and also aspects of medicine beyond just clinical stuff (policy, finances, ethics, etc.). If you want something that's going to be more clinical and actual medical school/professional level, NEJM is probably a better choice. Whatever you read, you'll probably have to do some independent learning (like we all do) when you come across a drug or term you're not familiar with. That's part of medicine though, you should never stop learning. Just getting yourself into reading medical literature at all before med school will be helpful though, so good for you.

Edit: I'd also think your undergrad would probably have access to NEJM and possibly JAMA for free as well. So there's be a minimal financial investment on your part.
 
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I do not recommend consuming any medical journals, as the paper isn't the best for your digestive tract and the ink may be toxic.

Seriously though, JAMA is probably a decent place to start as it's a weekly (bi-weekly?) journal that covers a variety of fields and also aspects of medicine beyond just clinical stuff (policy, finances, ethics, etc.). If you want something that's going to be more clinical and actual medical school/professional level, NEJM is probably a better choice. Whatever you read, you'll probably have to do some independent learning (like we all do) when you come across a drug or term you're not familiar with. That's part of medicine though, you should never stop learning. Just getting yourself into reading medical literature at all before med school will be helpful though, so good for you.

Edit: I'd also think your undergrad would probably have access to NEJM and possibly JAMA for free as well. So there's be a minimal financial investment on your part.
Thank you for the advice! Sometimes I imagine I'm a goat and get hungry for paper but that's not the point ;)
 
All depends on the mood.
Personally, I enjoy reading NEJM. Frequently read NEMJ articles during my MCAT studying - I felt this helped w/ biology and biochemistry prep
Also, don't sleep on the AMA Journal of Ethics. Some of the articles posted and discussed in AMA JOE are super eye opening.
 
You can start with the New England Journal and Lancet. Those will publish the highest impact papers, which general tend to deal with issues that you do understand. While you might not understand all the medical jargon, you have to start somewhere and it's good practice to start learning that jargon since you will be using it for the rest of your life. Also, the non-original articles in those journals tend to be geared more towards the lay reader.
 
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If there's something specific you want to know more about, I'd recommend starting with Google Scholar. Most people recommend searching PubMed instead, but I prefer Google Scholar because it indexes more journals, plus patents. If there are topics that you want to keep up to date on, you can set up Google Scholar alerts, which will email you new papers containing the keywords that you set.

For a general periodic update, I like JAMA's newsletter.

Do not pay to subscribe to any journals, if that's what you were talking about. If you have attended college, you should be able to access almost any paper you want through your school's library's website. Even when they don't have access to the paper you want, you can request it through the InterLibrary Loan system on their website, and they'll email you a PDF of it within a few days usually. It's really an extraordinary resource.
 
Keep in mind that physicians trust randomized, clinical control trials; biologists trust molecular evidence of the mechanism that clearly shows causation. Personally, I think both are important. Understanding the mechanism makes it easier for you to predict the effects of the drug in different conditions and different people, as well as the effects of new treatments that target the same mechanism. But at the end of the day, if you don't have evidence from several strong, well-controlled RCTs, you don't know if it works, so RCTs are what really matter in medicine.

Review papers don't really count as evidence per se, but they're a great way to get an overview of a subfield or topic before you deep dive into the individual studies. For instance, the review paper Precision Obesity Treatments Including Pharmacogenetic and Nutrigenetic Approaches is a great summary of currently FDA approved obesity treatments, the RCTs behind them, and some emerging treatments. But, it's RCTs like the SEQUEL trial that count as evidence that phentermine/topiramate combination therapy is the most effective FDA approved treatment for obesity.
 
Keep in mind that physicians trust randomized, clinical control trials; biologists trust molecular evidence of the mechanism that clearly shows causation. Personally, I think both are important. Understanding the mechanism makes it easier for you to predict the effects of the drug in different conditions and different people, as well as the effects of new treatments that target the same mechanism. But at the end of the day, if you don't have evidence from several strong, well-controlled RCTs, you don't know if it works, so RCTs are what really matter in medicine.

I think it's more accurate to say that clinicians care about both RCTs and mechanism. That would be the gold standard of proof in medicine. But short of that, they would pick only RCTs over only mechanism. Mechanism shows that you know how it works but you don't necessarily know the clinical significance. In other words, you might knock out an enzyme target very effectively but if there are compensatory pathways or if it's a multi-factorial disease, the knockdown of a precise enzyme target might not matter clinically. RCTs, on the other hand, can show clinical efficacy even when the mechanism is unknown (as with many psychotropic drugs). Clinicians would obviously choose proven clinical efficacy over proven molecular efficacy when push comes to shove. But ideally, both would be present.
 
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