Please File this: Exercises on how to search PubMed Medline

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

 

How many of you routinely use PubMed Medline [the BEST SOURCE of

research- and clinically- based medical publications on WWW]?

 

If you do NOT use it, take a look! It is child's play to search it.

 

Try the following Medline search for info on XXXX in viral infections.

 

Let us say that XXXX = Sweet Wormwood or Purple Coneflower or

Garlic.

 

1. First, write out the SYNONYMS for each herb, and their known active

principles, for example:

 

Sweet Wormwood is Artemisia annua OR qinghao and its known active

agent is artemisinin OR qinghaosu

 

Purple Coneflower is Echinacea purpurea OR Zizhuihua OR Zizhuiju

and its known active agents include cichoric-acid and alkamides or

alkylamides

 

Garlic is Allium sativum OR Dasuan and its known active agents include

allicin

 

NB 1: WILDCARD: A star symbol (*) is used as a wildcard (word

truncator). For example, the profile (Qinghao* OR artemis*) will find:

qinghao or qinghaosu or artemisia or artemisiae or artemisinin or

artemisinine or artemisinins or artemisinines

 

NB 2: In Medline, linking words and/or MUST be CAPITALISED, i.e.

written as xxxx AND yyyy, or xxxx OR yyyy

 

2. Open Medline at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed

 

In the search panel, copy in the following profile, exactly as below:

 

(antiviral OR viral OR virus) AND infect* AND (Sweet Wormwood OR

Artemis* OR qinghao* OR Echinac* OR Zizhui* OR cichoric acid OR

alkamide* OR alkylamide* OR Garlic OR Allium OR Allii OR Dasuan OR

allicin*)

 

Medline returned 108 hits for that profile. See: http://tinyurl.com/d2yxl

 

You can download all abstracts for a profile by:

setting the " Send To " option to Email,

selecting Format = Abstract,

Start with Item = 1 and send (select a number =/> the number of

abstracts)

In the Email panel, enter your email address,

click on Mail

 

Another test:

 

See what Medline has for the profile:

 

acup* AND multiple sclerosis

 

Please PLAY with Medline to get the feel for it. It is an awesome free

resource for literature searches in any area of medicine and many areas

of vet med!

 

 

Best regards,

 

 

Tel: (H): +353-(0) or (M): +353-(0)

 

 

 

 

Ireland.

Tel: (W): +353-(0) or (M): +353-(0)

 

 

 

" Man who says it can't be done should not interrupt man doing it " -

Chinese Proverb