We cannot give medical advice on individual cases. We cannot recommend doctors, drugs or other treatments, or confirm diagnoses. It is irresponsible to give medical advice to patients without benefit of a proper interview and physical examination. You should be suspicious of anyone (on the Internet or anywhere) who is prepared to offer you diagnosis or treatment at a distance.

We cannot answer questions from students with research assignments or school projects.

Although the eMJA contains useful information for patients and others, it is not designed as a health information site for consumers. Please be aware of the purpose and limitations of what we publish.

Review articles

are designed to educate doctors about the state of medical knowledge of a particular subject. They are written by experts who review the research on the subject and form an overall view. The accuracy of that view is depends on the skills of the experts and the completeness of their review of the literature. Many topics in medical practice are controversial, with good evidence on both sides of a question, or sometimes with little evidence on both sides, so even the most careful expert cannot give an authoritative opinion. Nevertheless, the review articles published in the eMJA will generally give a good picture of the state of the art — especially the Clinical guidelines produced by systematic review of the literature.

Research articles

are designed to answer a particular research question. One research paper, on its own, is rarely accepted as proof of a particular proposition. Results must be replicated in other studies before they are accepted by the scientific community. So, if you read in a research article that Drug A was better than Drug B, that doesn't prove that your doctor should be giving you Drug A right now. There are always questions that need to be asked first, such as: What kind of patients were being studied? What was used to define "better"? Have other studies found the same result? Research results must be read carefully and applied cautiously.

Be sceptical

We advise people to be cautious about using information derived from the Internet for the purpose of self-diagnosis and treatment. Many sites on the Internet make insupportable assertions about health and illness. Some seek to exploit the gullible.

Reputable sources of health information for the general public

• http://www.healthinsite.gov.au/ HealthInsite, a search site for reliable health information, Australian Department of Health
• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ MedlinePlus, a search site for reliable health information, US National Library of Medicine