Game of Thrones in Medicine

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Maybe because of the title you came here expecting to hear about how your doctor sleeps with his sister or kills people. No, that's not it. Neither about a war or magic.

The New England Journal of Medicine is arguably the most important journal in the field of medicine.
Normally is published on Wednesday and as such is what we use to employ our night that day. I did so today as it's Wednesday as I write this.

Then something happened...

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In the medical world is not rare to find acronyms for trials that mysteriously kind of make a memorable phrase. Some doctors find the mnemonic useful as taxonomy is rarely derivative in medicine.

Like the TORPEDO trial: Endovenous therapy for Deep Thrombosis Venosis.
The BATMAN trial: Biphosphonate and Anastrozole trial
The SPRINT trial: A Randomized Trial of Intensive versus Standard Blood-Pressure Control

Maybe a fluke... or not?

The Whole F'ing Pantheon of Trials:

The ATHENA Trial: Dronedarone to Prevent Hospitalization or Death in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation
The APOLLO: Aromatase Inhibitor Patient cOmpLiance Program With qoL Questionaire
The HERMES:Efficacy and Safety of 2 Doses of Org 34517 as Adjunctive Therapy in Subjects With Psychotic Major Depression
The ZEUS: Safety and Efficacy Iodofiltic Acid I 123 in the Treatment of Acute Coronary Syndrome

The Biblical Trials

The ADAM: Alzheimer`s Disease Acitretin Medication
The EVE: Non Invasive Arrhythmia Detection in Hospital Settings
[1]

Others fields of science also do it (yeah, medicine is an applied science, not a REAL science). But we do it more frequently. In fact, the running gag is so common the Britsh Medical Journal made a Study about it.[2]

Knockin' on pollen's door: live cell imaging of early polarization events in germinating Arabidopsis pollen

Like a rolling histone: epigenetic regulation of neural stem cells and brain development by factors controlling histone acetylation and methylation.
.
.
.
Etc.

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So despite me knowing this is something quite common. Today while reading the section on Clinical Implications of Basic Research.

what happened was...

I had to endure this today. [3]

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Now I do understand why people get bothered when I make puns. Is kind of cringy.
Will I stop making puns? No. But I now realize is not nice being on the receiving end.

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References

[1] http://blogs.nature.com/spoonful/2010/09/clinical_trial_names_can_be_qu.html

[2] Carl Gornitzki, Agne Larsson, Bengt Fadeel, Freewheelin’ scientists: citing Bob Dylan in the biomedical literature BMJ 2015; 351

[3] Brendan D. Manning, Ph.D., Game of TOR — The Target of Rapamycin Rules Four Kingdoms, September 6, 2017