How We Review ADPKD Evidence

How ADPKD Guide decides what is proven, promising, weak, or unresolved

This public resource is built from the ADPKD repo using an evidence-first workflow. The goal is to keep useful nuance without turning the site into unreadable academic sludge.

Evidence rubric

# Evidence Rubric (ADPKD)

## Tier 1 — High-confidence human evidence
Guidelines, systematic reviews/meta-analyses, RCTs, strong regulatory-grade evidence.

## Tier 2 — Moderate human evidence
Observational cohorts, case-control studies, smaller interventional studies, repeated but limited findings.

## Tier 3 — Early clinical/translational signal
Ongoing trials, pilot studies, subgroup signals, emerging biomarker-driven clinical signals.

## Tier 4 — Preclinical evidence
Animal models, organoids, cell/mechanistic studies.

## Tier 5 — Theoretical/hypothesis-level
Mechanistic hypotheses and inferred therapeutic strategies without direct validation.

## Required fields per claim
- Claim
- Evidence tier
- Source (URL/citation)
- Date
- Study type
- Disease relevance
- Mechanism
- Limitations
- Confidence level
- Replicated or contradicted

Source priority

# Source Priority

## Priority 1 (authoritative)
- KDIGO
- PubMed / PMC primary papers
- ClinicalTrials.gov
- FDA / EMA
- NIH / NIDDK
- Major peer-reviewed nephrology journals

## Priority 2 (strong supporting)
- Europe PMC
- PKD Foundation research pipeline pages
- Crossref metadata
- OpenAlex metadata and related-work graph
- National Kidney Foundation
- University/lab news pages only when linked to primary sources
- Conference abstracts only when flagged as preliminary

## Priority 3 (signal only, must verify)
- Company press releases
- Media summaries
- Expert commentary

## Exclusion / low trust by default
- Anonymous forums and unsourced claims
- Blogs without citations
- social posts without primary-source linkage

## Verification rule
No claim is promoted above Tier 3 unless validated by Priority 1 or strong Priority 2 sources.

## Source usage notes
- Use PubMed, PMC, and Europe PMC for article discovery and verification.
- Use ClinicalTrials.gov for trial status, phase, and recruitment tracking.
- Use Crossref and OpenAlex for DOI enrichment, citation cleanup, and related-paper discovery.
- Use PKD Foundation pages as public pipeline cross-checks, not as replacements for primary evidence.