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Independent medical information

Source Policy

Which sources Vireon uses, how claims are cited, and the six labels we use to describe the strength of medical evidence.

Vireon articles rely on sources that a reader can check. This page explains which sources we prefer, how we cite them and how we label the strength of evidence.

Source hierarchy

For important clinical claims we prefer, in order:

  1. current clinical guidelines;
  2. systematic reviews and meta-analyses;
  3. high-quality randomised or comparative trials;
  4. regulators and public-health authorities;
  5. professional medical societies;
  6. academic medical institutions;
  7. relevant observational studies and case series;
  8. manufacturer sources, for technical identity only;
  9. attributed clinical commentary, for context rather than proof.

Sources we do not use as evidence

  • medical-tourism sales websites and unsourced clinic blogs;
  • social media posts and anonymous lists;
  • patient reviews as proof that a treatment works;
  • AI-generated summaries;
  • manufacturer marketing as proof of superiority or safety.

How we cite

Citations sit next to the claim they support. Each article ends with a source list containing only the sources actually used, with the author or organisation, title, publisher, year and a DOI or stable link. For web pages that change, we record the date we accessed them.

How we label evidence

Decision-relevant claims carry one of six labels:

  • Strong: Consistent high-quality evidence or authoritative guidance supports the claim.
  • Moderate: Useful evidence supports the claim, with meaningful limitations.
  • Limited: Evidence exists but is small, non-randomised, heterogeneous or otherwise restricted.
  • Mixed: Reasonable studies or guidance do not agree.
  • Insufficient: The claim has not been established.
  • Uncertain incidence: A risk is plausible or has been reported, but its frequency cannot be reliably calculated.

We do not use in-between labels such as ‘limited to moderate’, and we do not estimate how often a complication happens from a single case report.

Manufacturer information

Manufacturers can tell us what a device is, its official specifications and its stated protocol. That is not independent evidence that it is effective, safe or better than an alternative, and we say so where it matters.