Hormones · evidence review
Do hormones protect the shoulder?
Frozen shoulder, calcific tendinitis, rotator cuff tears: all of them hit women most often after forty, and orthopaedic surgeons have long suspected estrogen is behind it.
Stage 1: breadth. Assessed from abstracts, but all papers at once – because when dozens of studies look at one question, their number and the direction of their conclusions are already a result. Stage 2: depth – full texts, methodology, detailed results. Coming soon.
Thesis:
What do the best studies say?
A stopgap until we assess methodology: systematic reviews and randomised trials in humans first. There is not a single RCT, so I add observational studies in humans separately. Within each group, ordered by journal rank – SJR from SCImago (citation prestige; Q1–Q4 = quarter of journals in the field, Q1 = top 25%) – not by the quality of the study itself – that assessment from full texts is in preparation. Number of people, duration and methodology notes – from the abstracts.
How to read the tags
17 people2 wkhealthy how many people were studied, for how long and who.
Q1 quarter of journals in the field: Q1 = top 25%, Q4 = bottom. It is a broad group – only SJR tells the journals inside it apart: just 4% of journals score above 2, and fewer than 1% above 5.
SJR journal rank (SCImago) – higher is better. Half of all journals score below 0.33.
RCR how often this particular paper is cited compared with its field – higher is better: 1 = average, 2 = twice as often. Papers from the last ~2 years have a provisional value (~) or none at all – not because they are weak, but because too little time has passed.
h journal h-index – higher means more established, but it also grows with the sheer number of papers, so very high-volume journals get an inflated score.
How strong is the evidence behind each answer?
How to read it: bar length = number of papers, colour = level of evidence from sage (strongest: randomised clinical trials in humans) to brown (weakest: cells in a dish). An answer with a lot of sage and blue is backed by human studies; an answer with only ochre and grey rests on animals, cells and reviews of other people's work.
A · RCT in humans (strongest)B · observational in humansC · animalsD · cells (weakest)R · review (secondary)
How strong are the journals behind the YES / NO / MIXED studies? SJR
How to read it: each dot is one paper, the further right the higher the journal ranks in SJR (SCImago). SJR counts not only how many citations a journal receives but also where they come from: a citation from Cell weighs more than one from a small journal, so sheer volume of papers does not inflate it (which is why megajournals that rank high on the h-index drop here). Log scale: the ticks are 0, 1, 3, 10. The vertical line = the group median. Hover over a dot to see the title. Papers in journals outside Scopus (e.g. Cureus, preprints) have no SJR and are not shown.
How often are the YES / NO / MIXED papers cited – compared with their own field? RCR (NIH)
How to read it: each dot is one paper. RCR (Relative Citation Ratio, NIH iCite) says how many times more often a paper is cited than a typical paper in its field, per year: 1 = average, 2 = twice as often, 0.5 = half as often. It evens out the paper's age and differences between fields, so an old paper does not win just because it is old. Log scale, line = group median. Papers from the last ~2 years have only a provisional RCR or none – they are not on the chart, and provisional values are marked "~" in the table. Raw citation counts are in the table and on hover.
How strong are the journals behind the YES / NO / MIXED studies? h-index
How to read it: the same question as with SJR, an older and simpler measure: each dot is one paper, the further right the more established the journal (OpenAlex h-index: how many of the journal's articles have at least that many citations). The vertical line = the group median, i.e. the typical journal for that answer. Hover over a dot to see the title. Caveat: the h-index favours big, old, broad titles (Science has 1750, a good specialist quarterly 60–250), and a commentary in Science is still just a commentary – the strength of evidence is shown by the first chart, not this one.
How have the findings shifted over the years?
How to read it: one bar = one publication year, split into YES, NO and MIXED ("not applicable" papers left out). It shows whether the topic is accelerating and whether new papers pull in one direction or the dispute is sharpening. Hover over a segment to see the count.
YESNOMIXED
All papers
Sorted by: stance → level of evidence → citations. "Not applicable" papers at the end. Links go to PubMed, DOI and, where available, the open-access full text.
| Stance | Level | Year | Journal · quartile · SJR · h | Cit. · RCR | Title |
|---|
A review of PubMed abstracts (as of ); the YES / NO / MIXED split was made by Claude (AI) from the authors' conclusions, full texts have not been read yet. This is not medical advice – make decisions about medication with your doctor.