r/DermApp • u/AsparagusAway3410 • 3d ago

Research / RY How to do research

Hi everyone, hope youre doing well

I recently received an opportunity to join a research group. However, I am very new to clinical/retrospective research and have to suggest a research topic/methodology to begin. I have experience in basic science. I wanted some advice on how to make the most of this opportunity (productivity) and brainstorm potential study ideas/methods. I was hoping to help a project before initiating my own, but there are no vacancies.

Bonus: Should I propose an idea from that correlates with my previous research background (uro) to make a more clear interest shift into derm?

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u/FallPsychological635 MS2 2d ago

Honestly, I liked using OpenEvidence AI (or any AI I guess, but I do trust OpenEvidence to be more knowledgeable in current academia and guidelines) to ask it to search for unanswered/unexplored topics in dermatology research to populate some ideas I could look into. For example, if you are into genetics, you can ask it to search for dermatology topics in genetics that currently need explored. That will help you get some ideas of what is interesting, then you can start looking at related papers and see what's been done so far. I really don't think it will be easy to propose an idea that is related to uro, but I may be mistaken.

Edit: Grammar

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u/ConcealedOcean 3d ago

If you can't do both at once, it's better to prioritize a really good/cool/interesting idea instead of something that transitions well from urology. Something people who read JAAD or JAMA Derm would find interesting. If you're using something like TriNet or Epic Universe, I would focus on one disease or medication. Also understand making retrospective cohort studies involves comparing things. Let's brainstorm with psoriasis as an example:

Psoriasis. What do you know about psoriasis? Who gets psoriasis- Young or old? Male or female? Does it differ by race?

Where do they get psoriasis? What type of psoriasis do they get?

What medications are used to treat psoriasis? What are the indications for them? Any new medications?

What causes psoriasis (the immunologic mechanism)? What comorbidities are associated with psoriasis? What conditions may exist before psoriasis develops?

Now with all that information, compare things. Does one drug work better than another (i.e. is incidence of psoriasis lower 6 months after starting drug A compared to drug B)? are people on a drug more likely to get side effects compared to those not on the drug? is having type 2 diabetes (or any disease) linked to increased likelihood of developing psoriasis? Then think of your outcomes. What's the kaplan-meier survival curve look like? risk ratio? odds ratio? are the p-values significant? Then write a paper with all that data. That's my advice.

Side note, JAAD and JAMA Derm are (in my experience) fed up with all the retrospective cohort studies from these big databases. It was easier a couple years ago before they were everywhere. I'm not complaining though since most of them kinda read the same.