Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
One example is below.
Q: Paragraph: "Although the story didn't cite the cost of appendectomy emergency or urgent surgery and we wish it had, we nonetheless will give it a satisfactory score because it at least cited what the editorial writer wrote, ""A secondary benefit is the savings to the hospital generated by minimizing staff and anesthesiologist presence late in the evening and during the wee hours of the morning."" As with our harms score above, although the story didn't give absolute numbers, in this case we think it was sufficient for it to report that ""The scientists found no significant difference among the groups in the patients' condition 30 days after surgery or in the length of their operation or hospital stay."" Although the story didn't give absolute numbers, in this case we think it was sufficient for it to report that ""The scientists found no significant difference among the groups in the patients' condition 30 days after surgery or in the length of their operation or hospital stay."" Despite running less than 300 words, this story did an adequate job in explaining the quality of the evidence, including pointing out limitations. No disease-mongering here. The story meets the bare minimum requirement for this criterion in that it at least cited what an editorial stated. The focus of the story was on a study comparing emergency appendectomy with surgery done up to 12 hours later or beyond. This is the whole focus of the story and one we applaud when it begins: ""Appendectomy is the most common emergency surgery in the world, but it doesn't have to be."" There were no claims made about the novelty of this research, and we may have wished for a bit more context on this. Nonetheless, the potential for guiding future care decisions was made clear. Not applicable. Given that the story only pulled excerpts from the journal article and the accompanying editorial, and didn't include any fresh quotes from interviews, we can't be sure of the extent to which it may have been influenced by a news release.". Claim: Some appendicitis cases may not require 'emergency' surgery
A: We really don't understand why only a handful of mainstream news organizations reported this story. (At least in what we found.) The most common emergency surgery in the world. Rushing to emergency surgery may not carry any benefit. Waiting a few hours may be safer and less expensive. Why is that not a story? We applaud USA Today for finding time and space and clearly it didn't need to free up much space to do a good job telling the story. The story explains that as many as 300,0 appendectomies are done each year in the US. That figure alone explains why this is an important study to report.
Rationale: The output is an analysis of the claim while considering the paragraph as a reference. The output highlights the key features presented in the paragraph and explains the claim accordingly.
Q: Paragraph: The story offers an estimate of the cost of an acupuncture session at $125. The study participants received nine separate sessions, which would, by this estimate, total $1,125. The story also mentions that some insurance carriers will pay for acupuncture treatments. The story reports an improvement in perceived pain relief by the participantsreceiving actual acupuncture (41 percent) versus those in the control group getting sham treatments (27 percent). It also reports that the reduction in pain persists for up to a year, although not to the same degree. It's helpful that the story lists the relative reduction in pain seen in both groups for comparison purposes. However, the story would have been stronger had it indicated how the pain score used in the study works (e.g. What's the range of the scale?) and what the absolute reduction in pain scores was in both groups (e.g. If pain scores were already low to begin with, a 41 percent reduction might not be very meaningful). We would need that type of information to be able to judge the story Satisfactory on this criterion. This story made no mention of potential harms from the use of acupuncture although the research paper clearlyidentified some "mild adverse events" affecting participants. These included headaches, pain and bruising at the acupuncture sites, and an aggravation of some fibromyalgia symptoms. While these are far from serious harms, readers deserve to know that they are possible outcomes. The story reports on the findings of a double-blinded, multi-center study comparing real acupuncture to a sham treatment. The description of the study design is solid and includes discussion of limitations and confounding factors. Quoting two different experts, the story suggests that the pain reductions in the acupuncture group might have been due to their increasing use of antidepressants during the study, which "may have artificially boosted the positive results." This is an interesting observation, although a look atsupplemental table 5 in the paper shows that the sham treatment group's use of antidepressants also increased during the study, and to a greater extent than the acupuncture group. To us, this suggests that the persistent benefit in terms of pain in the acupuncture group is unlikely to be due mainly to the use of these other medications. This story does not appear to commit disease mongering. The story quotesexperts other than those conducting the research, as well as providing additional information from other sources. One of the quoted experts appears not to be an acupuncturist, which is good. The story does not mention any potential conflicts of interest but the research paper itself states there were no conflicts. Readers might have benefited, however, from knowing the funding source for this research, which was The Spanish Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs and the Andalusian Public Health System, two public agencies. Acupuncture is considered to be an alternative, or complement, to traditional western medicine. The story mentions that most fibromyalgia patients take medications for pain, depression,and other symptoms, and that they may also receive other alternative therapies, such as massage. Acupuncture is now considered a fairly common alternative therapy for a number of conditions and is usually available in most locales. The story hints as much when it says that 9 out of 10 patients with fibromyalgia report using some form of alternative therapy, including acupuncture. Previous studies of acupuncture among fibromyalgia patients showed conflicting results. In this case, the story identifies that the acupuncture was individualized to the particular patients, as opposed to some general acupuncture approach, and compares an experimental group of participants with a control group, something missing in some earlier studies. There is enough original reporting here that we can be confident the story is not based on a news release. Claim: Acupuncture May Help Ease Fibromyalgia Pain, Study Finds
A:
This HealthDay story reports on a study of fibromyalgia patients who received acupuncture as a supplemental treatment for pain. Their results were compared to those of another group of patients receiving only sham treatments. The story says that after 10 weeks of acupuncture, patients reported an average of a 41 percent reduction in pain, compared to only a 27 percent drop in patients getting the sham treatments. The larger decrease in perceived pain with the acupuncture patients continued for at least a year, the story said, indicating that acupuncture is effective in reducing pain and improving the quality of life in fibromyalgia patients. The story gives readers a generally good overview of the study, with attention to costs, limitations, and inclusion of an independent expert comment. But the discussion of benefits wasn't quite detailed enough to clear our bar, and the story lacked any mention of potential harms from acupuncture treatment. Fibromyalgia is a poorly understood condition in which pain is present in multiple body regions. It is unclear what is the cause of the pain and whether other symptoms that can accompany the pain depression, fatigue, sleep issues are caused by the pain itself or the underlying process. Despite not knowing what causes fibromyalgia, several medications have been shown to decrease symptoms in affected individuals, but there is no cure and the benefits of treatment are not dramatic. For this reason, there is interest in identifying other treatment options including so-called alternative treatments such as acupuncture and massage. The current study examined acupuncture in women recruited from three primary care practices in Spain. All women were referred for acupuncture but could be treated with medications by their primary physician. Note that no patients were receiving opiate pain medicines or were involved in legal cases regarding their pain (which may have confounded the results). Patients were randomly assigned to individualized acupuncture treatment or a sham (fake) version of acupuncture. Patients did not know which treatment they were receiving. The study appeared to have been well done and demonstrated that women who received the actual acupuncture treatment had less pain at the end of the 10-week treatment period. While encouraging, the more interesting results were that the patients continued to do better for up to one year. This is important because fibromyalgia is a chronic condition and for treatments such as acupuncture, the question is whether it provides only short-term benefit or is it something that needs to be continued on a regular basis.