text_1: Testing hand-grip strength could be a simple, low-cost way to predict heart attack and stroke risk
text_2: This release about the ability of grip strength testing to predict death and disease rates leaves readers without enough context and ultimately overstates the importance of the findings. While the tone of the release is measured and the quotes include some caution about interpreting the results, there’s no mention anywhere in the release about the limits of observational studies — which are discussed both in the study that’s the basis for the release and the accompanying editorial. And although overall death rates are unquestionably an important outcome, the release does not tell readers what it would mean for a person to be identified as having a 17 percent higher risk. What use is that information and how would it affect how that person is cared for? “Why This Matters” is something this news release should have educated us about. A clinical test result is useful only when it helps people make decisions. This release should have spent more time addressing how the study results might be applied. Would identifying a person as being at a 17 percent increased risk of death or a 7 percent increased risk of a heart attack change how doctors would monitor or treat him or her? Would someone be prescribed a statin based on a finding of decreased hand grip strength? Even though the study was intended only to assess how grip test results in a wider variety of countries compare to previous findings in high-income countries, the release could have at least briefly mentioned how such test results are commonly used in clinical settings. What’s more, it’s clear that news coverage, feeding off this news release, is reporting on this without caveats about observational studies, and therefore, delivering an incomplete message to the public. And it all started with this news release, because the caveats appear in both the journal article and in an accompanying commentary. Here are a handful of examples: Your Handshake Tells the Story of Your Health Patients’ grip strengths reveal heart attack risk: study Palm ‘holds secrets of future health’ Why a weak handshake is bad news for your heart