This Week in PLOS Medicine: Socioeconomics of lung cancer; Vitamin D and obesity; PROGRESS

Image Credit: Bradley Stemke

Four new articles published this week, including two parts of a series that is co-publishing with the BMJ.

In a systematic review and meta-analysis, Lynne Forrest and colleagues find that patients with lung cancer who are more socioeconomically deprived are less likely to receive surgical treatment, chemotherapy, or any type of treatment combined, compared with patients who are more socioeconomically well off, regardless of cancer stage or type of health care system.

A Mendelian randomization study based on data from multiple cohorts conducted by Karani Santhanakrishnan Vimaleswaran and colleagues re-examines the causal nature of the relationship between vitamin D levels and obesity.

In the second article in the PROGRESS series on prognostic factor research, Sara Schroter and colleagues discuss the role of prognostic factors in current clinical practice, randomized trials, and developing new interventions, and explain why and how prognostic factor research should be improved.

In this article, the third in the PROGRESS series on prognostic factor research, Sara Schroter and colleagues review how prognostic models are developed and validated, and then address how prognostic models are assessed for their impact on practice and patient outcomes, illustrating these ideas with examples.

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