Wikipedia:Peer review/Doxorubicin/archive1

Doxorubicin

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for June 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This article has been at GA for about a year now, and was selected by Portal:Medicine as one of the best articles related to Medicine on wikipedia. I'd like to know what other editors think of the article pertaining to the Featured Article criteria, and what we would need to do to get it to FA. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:31, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC. The sourcing looks good.

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 23:47, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Interesting article, but I think it needs a fair amount of work to get to FA. Here are some suggestions for improvement:

A model article is useful - there are two FAs that seem to be useful as models for style, structure, etc. Paracetamol and Bupropion. The latter is more recent and is better referenced.
The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. For example the light sensitivity seems to only be in the lead.
As is the lead is too short and not detailed enough. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way, so the history should be in there even as a phrase, or biosynthesis. Please see WP:LEAD
The first sentence already tells us this is a drug widely used in cancer chemotherapy so what is the purpose of the third sentence It is commonly used in the treatment of a wide range of cancers.? Could these be combined?
FAC requires writing at a professional level, even approaching brilliant prose. This is awakward in spots It is photosensitive and it is often covered by an aluminium bag to prevent light interacting affecting it. and needs a copy edit. *Another example, it sould be "et al." in "Arcamone et. al" (I also note that et al. is often italicized as it is Latin)
Before a copyedit and expanding the lead, I would expand the article to provide more context to the reader. See WP:PCR. For example, this is well done It can also cause neutropenia (a decrease in white blood cells), as well as complete alopecia (hair loss). but many other places need some explanatory text.
- What is the convention that caused it be renamed: They named this new compound Adriamycin, after the Adriatic Sea, and the name was later changed to doxorubicin to conform to the established naming convention.[5]?
- A sentence or two on how DNA replication works and how cancer cells are fast growing and do this often would help a lot in providing context for the whole "Mechanism of action" section
The lead gives us six names for the compound, but not "DXR" which seems to be the second most used name in the text.
The lead uses "Daunomycin", but the rest of the article apparently uses "Daunorubicin" throughout. This is needlessly confusing to the casual reader.
The Mechanism of action section has the first sentence The exact mechanism of action of doxorubicin is complex and still somewhat unclear, though it is thought to interact with DNA by intercalation.[14] However the next sentence seems to unequivocally state something different Doxorubicin is known to interact with DNA by intercalation and inhibition of macromolecular biosynthesis.[15]. Is it thought to intercalate or known to?
Why not link Cisplatin instead of Platinum in Doxil is used primarily for the treatment of ovarian cancer where the disease has progressed or recurred after platinum-based chemotherapy ...?
Article has several one or two sentence paragraphs - these should be combined with others or expanded if possible (they break up the flow now)
Square meters are used in a LD where I think cubic meters are meant
Please use my examples as just that - these are not an exhaustive list and if one example is given, please check to make sure there are not other occurrences of the same problem.
Refs look fine as noted above

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from CCG _(T-C):

Some points that seemed to stand out to me, such as the need for an expansion of the lead section, and copyediting, have already been mentioned above. However, I do wish to reiterate the need for copyediting; I edited the sentence "It is photosensitive and it is often covered by an aluminium bag to prevent light interacting affecting it." upon reading the article.

The article needs to be expanded. While not everything that is standard to pharmacology articles would be useful here, content on pharmacokinetics would likely be, and sections on chemistry, contraindications, and toxicity are also fairly common. A section on toxicity would seem especially relevant, given that it's a chemo drug, complete with all kinds of unwanted effects; even though much of this is covered in "side effects", if expanded this section may end up needing to be split - i.e. nausea as a side effects vs. cardiotoxicity of higher doses. There also does not appear to be any information regarding any possible interactions with other drugs.

I did not find any problems with the refs given, though if more content is added there will, obviously, be new refs to check.

I'm not an expert on explaining things, but I'd also suggest getting the opinion of a layperson (or, if you're one of those people unlike me that can do so, pretending you're a layperson) to see how much sense the article makes, and if any work is needed in the WP:JARGON department.

The lead section will obviously need to be expanded again if significant amounts of content are added, so I'd save worrying about that bit until the content that is going to go in the rest of the article is finished. I had a few other thoughts that have already been listed above by Ruhrfisch. Hope this is helpful, CCG _(T-C) 00:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, is it just me or does the article use both British and American english spelling on occasion? The article seems to be primarily American english, so any British english likely needs to be changed. I'll go ahead and fix the examples I saw, but if you see any more it'd be good to fix them. CCG _(T-C) 00:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]