Climate Change and the Onset of Lyme Disease: Analysis of the IMRAD format

On July, 2015, Ticks and Tick-Borne Disease published, “Climate Change Influences on the Annual Onset of Lyme Disease in the United States” by Monaghan et al. This study was conducted by a group of experts from various research areas. Their objective was to predict how climate change influences the annual onset week of Lyme disease in the United States. This research article fully describes its findings by using tables, data and figures, different tenses and voices, hedging verbs, and the IMRAD format.

Monaghan et al., begin with an abstract.  The abstract mainly uses the present tense and passive voice. Such as, “Projections are made individually”. Besides the abstract, the article is written in the IMRAD format, which begins with an introduction. The introduction provides the knowledge of the Impact of climate change on Lyme disease, includes geographic distribution of ​​B. burgdorferi-infected ticks and the onset season of Lyme disease. This section switches between present tense and past tense. It uses the passive voice. Such as “The Lyme disease season was positively associated with.” Even though this article does not present a formal hypothesis, it uses past research to infer the relevance of the current research.

Secondly, in the methods section. This section is to state what the authors did to their study. It is in the past tense and uses the passive voice.  For example, it states, “The LOW model was developed.” The article also uses subheading, such as “National Lyme disease model”, “Climate data”, and “Statistical Analysis” are used to categorize the section. Also, the authors describe the types of data in detail and analyze them.  This methods section mainly tells readers what experiments researches have done, what methods they have used, and what steps you have gone through. This section helps readers to repeat the study according to the authors’ descriptions.

Next is the results section, which is in the present tense and the passive voice. For example, “LOW is projected.” Monaghan et al. discuss the key findings of their research including data, tables, and figures. This research revolves around the climate change influences on the onset week of Lyme disease. In these figures, the authors use four RCP scenarios compared to the historical national average LOW under the five national-level climate variables. In other tables In other tables, the LOW data and climate variable data of different regions are displayed.

Lastly, the discussion section provides the main results from the authors’ study and it can be seen as a summary of the entire article. It is in the present tense and uses the passive voice. For example, “Larger changes in LOW are projected”, “The greatest changes were observed.” This section uses hedging verb, such as “indicate”, “likely” and “might”. The authors describe how their research provides evidence of the climate change leads to the early onset of Lyme disease in the United States. The authors also discuss the limitations of the LOW model for measuring climate change, and how this model affects the accuracy of the entire study data. The authors are combined with past research to explain the significance and influence of this study on future research. At the same time, they raise further research questions, which discuss the shortcomings of the current study and make suggestions based on the shortcomings of research.

                                                                         References

Monaghan MJ, Moore SM, Sampson KM, Beard CB, Eisen RJ. 2015. Climate change influences on the annual onset of Lyme disease in the United States.  Ticks and Tick-Borne Disease. 6(5):615-22. [cited 2020 June 7]; Available from:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877959X15000874#bib0130