Using Martindale's to Create a Drug Keyword Search

by Cindy Schmidt, M.D., M.L.S.

Created 07/2014

Updated 07/18/2019

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Instructions

• Do not use Internet Explorer to work on this tutorial.  Firefox will work.

• Use the Arrow icons below the instruction screen to go forwards and backwards in the tutorial.

• If you want to skip between distant parts of the tutorial, you can use the "Menu/Contents" button above the instruction screen to show the tutorial's "Table of Contents" and click on the needed section of the tutorial.

• If you find that the menu/contents panel is jittering or frozen,  right click on the instruction panel header and select the "reload" or "refresh" option. The menu should begin to work.

• Clicking the "Single-page view" link will produce a transcript of the entire tutorial.

Objective

After completing this tutorial you will have:

• used Martindale's via LexiComp to gather alternate names for a specific drug
• added an additional, tutorial-provided name to the list of names from Martindale's
• joined the alternate terms to produce a comprehensive, PubMed, keyword  search 
• revised the search based on information from the PubMed "search details" page

Alternate Drug Names to Include in a Comprehensive, Keyword Search

•  English and foreign, generic drug names
• Simple chemical/scientific names (e.g. azidothymidine for zidovudine)
• Investigational names -- in all variants a writer might use
• Standard abbreviations (e.g. AZT for zidovudine)
• CAS Registry number (no variants needed)
• US and foreign proprietary (brand/trade) names

All of these types of drug names/numbers are available through Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference. The McGoogan Library provides Martindale's through the Lexi-Comp Interface.

Important Note

It's hard to create a tutorial that guides students through the steps in creating a search without creating that search for them. 

To attempt to do this, the tutorial will show you screenshots from construction of the "omacetaxine" search demonstrated in class.

You will complete the same search steps, but work on constructing a search for your "Final Search Assignment" drug --

nilotinib

Accessing Lexi-Comp

To reach the Martindale's monograph for nilotinib:

• Start at the Library's homepage.

• Click on the "Drug Resources" button.

• Click on the "Martindale's via LexiComp" link

Search LexiComp

• Search LexiComp for nilotinib

• There are two forms of nilotinib, "nilotinib" and "nilotinib hydrochloride," under the "Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference" heading.  You will need to make a single list of the names from both monographs.  (Most of the names in the second monograph will be duplicates.)

• As the  "nilotinib" monograph is listed first, you might as well start with it. 

The link to the "omacetaxine" monograph in Martindale's is shown in the screenshot below:

Add names to a Word document - English generic name

• Open a Word document.

• Type the English generic name for nilotinib (title of the Martindale's  monograph) into your Word document or copy the monograph title and paste it into the Word document.

 -- and pasting it into a Word document.

Chemical/Scientific Name if simple

• If the chemical/scientific name is simple (e.g. if it doesn't contain a lot of punctuation marks, parentheses, brackets, etc), copy it and paste it into your Word document.

Omacetaxine's chemical name is too complicated for a search strategy, but the chemical name of your drug may be simpler.  Ask one of the lab facilitators if you are not sure whether you should add the chemical name to your search.

CAS Registry Number

• Copy the number that follows the "CAS:" and paste the number into your Word document.

-- and pasting the number into the Word document.

Notes

• Martindale monographs sometimes include a "Note" or "Notes" entry, and, on occasion, this entry includes alternate drugs names.  Copy any such names for nilotinib and paste them into your Word document.  

The screenshots below show a "Note" containing a name for omacetaxine --

-- and pasting this name into the Word document.

Synonyms

• Copy the synonyms for nilotinib that are written with the English alphabet. 

The screenshot below shows the "Synonyms" line in the omacetaxine document.  The red boxed terms include a standard abbreviation and an alternate name for omacetaxine.  The two blue-boxed terms are investigational names.  

In the screenshot below, the synonyms have been pasted into the Word document. 

"United States Adopted" and "British Approved" Names

• Check the "United States Adopted" and "British Approved" names.  

If these are listed, do they differ (even by a single character) from the names already in your document?  

• If you find a new term, paste it into your Word document. 

International Nonproprietary Names

• Check the International Nonproprietary Names to see if terms not already included in your Word document are present.  This list sometimes includes foreign generic names that are not listed in the synonyms list.

• If additional terms are present, copy these (or the whole list)

• Paste into your Word document. You may wish to use "Paste special" so that you can paste unformatted/plain text into your Word document.

• Remove any terms in non-English alphabets (e.g. arabic script, chinese kongi) from your list.

The screenshot below shows copying of the international nonproprietary (foreign generic) names for omacetaxine.  Note the avoidance of names in foreign scripts.

Preparations: Single Preparation

• Look at the navigation panel on the left-hand side of the page.

• Click on the "Preparations: Single-Ingredient" link.

• Copy the list of single-ingredient preparation names.  This list includes U.S. and foreign brand/trade/proprietary names.

• Paste these into your Word document.

-- and pasting into the Word document.

Add two names

If you are a PHPR 562 student and working on a nilotinib keyword search, please, add the investigational name --

"NSC 747599"

-- to the list of names for nilotinib that you harvested from Martindale's.  

The additional investigational name is an actual name for nilotinib that was located using PubChem. The inclusion this name in your list of names for nilotinib will force you to practice making some important decisions.

Is there another Martindale's monograph for your drug?

Some drugs have only one form represented by monographs in Martindale's.

Others, like nilotinib, have more than one Martindale's monograph.  The additional monographs usually contain one or two new names for the drug.

• Return to the LexiComp search results for nilotinib to find the link to the Martindale's monograph for "nilotinib hydrochloride." 

• Repeat the tutorial steps for the new monograph.  You do not have to add names to your Word document that duplicate names that are already present, but it may be easier to add the names to the docment and remove the duplicates later.

Step 1 of creating your search is complete

1.  You now have completed the first step in creating a drug keyword search, gathering the alternate terms for the drug.

Step 2: Remove Non-essential Words or Symbols

2.  Remove any non-essential words or symbols,

• remove salt/hydrate names like mepisuccinate, sodium or hydrochloride or hydrate or foreign words for salts like mepisuccinato or natrium.  Keep the salt name only if it's part of a one word drug name or essential to drug activity (i.e. if names like hydroclorinilotinib or nilotinibihidroclor were included, you would keep the whole word.)
• remove the [rINN __] that appears with foreign nonproprietary names
• remove country names from the list of trade names
• remove any foreign words in foreign script and the surrounding parentheses/brackets/etc.

Step 3: Insert Alternate Forms of Investigational Names

Step 4: Put Quotes around any names that contain spaces.

 In the screenshot below, omacetaxine names containing spaces have been enclosed in quotes.

Step 5 and 6: Remove any punctuation marks other than hyphens within drug names and insert OR's

5.  Remove any punctuation marks other than hyphens within drug names and simultaneously insert  OR's between the drug names.

Letters in the search terms can be in either upper or lower case, but the OR's joining the terms must be in all caps.

Below, the omacetaxine search is shown after completion of this step.

Omacetaxine OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR "CGX 635" OR "NSC 141633" OR HHT OR Homoharringtonine OR omacetaxina OR Omacetaxine OR Omacetaxini OR Omacétaxine OR "Chuan Shan Ning" OR "Fu Er" OR "Gao Rui Te" OR "Hua Pu Le" OR "Jin Nuo Xing" OR "Sai Lan" OR "Wo Ting" OR Synribo

Step 7: Remove duplicate drug names

7.   Remove drug names that are spelled with the same letters even if one of the versions contains accents/umlauts/etc since PubMed doesn't consider accents/umlauts/etc. when searching.

In the omacetaxine example search, a duplicate of "omacetaxine"  has been bold-faced below:

Omacetaxine OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR "CGX 635" OR "NSC 141633" OR HHT OR Homoharringtonine OR omacetaxina OR Omacetaxine OR Omacetaxini OR  OR "Chuan Shan Ning" OR "Fu Er" OR "Gao Rui Te" OR "Hua Pu Le" OR "Jin Nuo Xing" OR "Sai Lan" OR "Wo Ting" OR Synribo

In the copy of the search below, the duplicate has been removed. 

Omacetaxine OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR "CGX 635" OR "NSC 141633" OR HHT OR Homoharringtonine OR omacetaxina OR Omacetaxini OR "Chuan Shan Ning" OR "Fu Er" OR "Gao Rui Te" OR "Hua Pu Le" OR "Jin Nuo Xing" OR "Sai Lan" OR "Wo Ting" OR Synribo

Step 8. Enclose in parentheses and add [all]

(Omacetaxine OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR "CGX 635" OR "NSC 141633" OR HHT OR Homoharringtonine OR omacetaxina OR Omacetaxini OR "Chuan Shan Ning" OR "Fu Er" OR "Gao Rui Te" OR "Hua Pu Le" OR "Jin Nuo Xing" OR "Sai Lan" OR "Wo Ting" OR Synribo)[all]

Step 9. Truncate if desired

9.  Consider truncation (*).

If your search contains multiple words that begin with the same word trunk.  Consider replacing all with the trunk followed by an asterisk.

Without truncation, the omacetaxine search is as shown below:

(Omacetaxine OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR "CGX 635" OR "NSC 141633" OR HHT OR Homoharringtonine OR omacetaxina OR Omacetaxini  OR "Chuan Shan Ning" OR "Fu Er" OR "Gao Rui Te" OR "Hua Pu Le" OR "Jin Nuo Xing" OR "Sai Lan" OR "Wo Ting" OR Synribo)[all]

Use of truncation can shorten the search.

omacetaxin*

--will retrieve --

omacetaxine, omacetaxina, omacetaxini

With truncation of omacetaxin*, the following search strategy is generated:

(Omacetaxin* OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR "CGX 635" OR "NSC 141633" OR HHT OR Homoharringtonine  OR "Chuan Shan Ning" OR "Fu Er" OR "Gao Rui Te" OR "Hua Pu Le" OR "Jin Nuo Xing" OR "Sai Lan" OR "Wo Ting" OR Synribo)[all]

Run the search in PubMed

To test your search in PubMed:

• Click on this link to open the Library's homepage in the right hand part of this webpage.

• Click on the "Literature Databases" button.

• When you reach the "Literature Databases" page, click on the "MEDLINE via PubMed" button.

Run the search in PubMed

• Copy the search from your Word document and paste it into the PubMed search box.  

• Hit the search button.

• When the results appear, look at the right-hand side of the screen.  Scroll down to find the "Search details" box.

• Click on the "see more" button in the "search details" box.

Find terms that need to be removed from your search.

PubMed only recognizes certain terms that contain spaces.  

When it doesn't recognize a term that contains a space, PubMed breaks the term into two terms and tries to find records that contain both terms whether or not they are next to each other.  

If PubMed doesn't find one of the terms, it looks for records that contain the other term.  This causes problems if one of the terms is used often in irrelevant records.

Find terms that need to be removed from your search.

If there are any space-containing, drug names in the "Quoted phrase not found:" list,

• Copy these into your Word document. 

• Above the list, type:

The following multi-word, drug names have been removed from the search because they were "not found" by PubMed and could cause retrieval of irrelevant results:

DO NOT INCLUDE TERMS THAT DO NOT CONTAIN SPACES IN THIS LIST!!  They do not cause retrieval of irrelevant results and should remain in your search.

• Remove the terms you've listed from the search strategy in your Word document.  Copy the revised search, paste it into the PubMed search strategy and run the revised search.

Here is what the omacetaxine search looks like after dealing with the multi-word names that were not found:

(Omacetaxin* OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR HHT OR Homoharringtonine OR "Fu Er” OR Synribo)[all]

The following multi-word, drug names were “not found” by PubMed and were removed to avoid retrieval of irrelevant results:
“CGX 635”, “NSC 141633”, “Chuan Shan Ning”, “Gao Rui Te”, “Hua Pu Le”, “Jin Nuo Xing”, “Sai Lan”, “Wo Ting”

Check for improper translations

Look again at the PubMed "Search Details" page. 

This time, look down to the "Translations" section.

Do the translations make sense for your search?  

• If one or more of your terms is translated into an irrelevant heading, author name, or journal name, go back to your Word document and add 

[tiab]

 after the improperly translated term.  [tiab] means "title and abstract".  If a term is followed by [tiab], PubMed will not translate it into MeSH terms and will only use the term you've entered to search titles and abstracts.

Let's say that, in the example search, "HHT" had been translated as 

“Hum Hered Trauma"[journal]   OR HHT[all fields]

The journal "Hum Hered Trauma" has nothing to do with the drug omacetaxine.  I would change the search as follows:

(Omacetaxin* OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633 OR HHT[tiab] OR Homoharringtonine OR "Fu Er” OR Synribo)[all]

 The following multi-word, drug names were “not found” by PubMed and were removed to avoid retrieval of irrelevant results:
“CGX 635”, “NSC 141633”, “Chuan Shan Ning”, “Gao Rui Te”, “Hua Pu Le”, “Jin Nuo Xing”, “Sai Lan”, “Wo Ting”

Check the revised search

• In your Word document, copy the revised search strategy.

• In PubMed, scroll to the top of the PubMed "search details" page. Remove the old search strategy.

• Paste the new search strategy into the search box and hit the "Search" button.

Check results for highlighting of non-drug terms

When the results of your revised search appear, most of the irrelevant results should be gone  You can check the abstract view to see what terms are highlighted.  Hopefully, the highlighted terms will be referring to your drug.

• Use the "Summary" drop-down menu below the search box to select the "Abstract" view

• Scan the results for highlighted terms (terms from your search strategy) that are being used in the search results for concepts that are not of interest to you.

At times, a foreign trade name may be an English word that's often used for a concept unrelated to the drug of interest.  An example, is "Logic" which is a foreign trade name for at least one drug. 

• If your search includes a foreign trade name that's an actual word used for a non-drug concept, paste the following heading at the bottom of your Word document:

Drug names removed from the search because of common but irrelevant meanings that caused retrieval of irrelevant results:

• Type or paste the problematic drug name under the heading.  Remove the problematic name from your search strategy.

• Copy the revised search strategy, and run the revised search in PubMed.

In the example "omacetaxine" search.  The HHT abbreviation has many irrelevant meanings.   The revised search would be:

(Omacetaxin* OR 26833-87-4 OR Ceflatonin OR CGX-635 OR NSC-141633 OR CGX635 OR NSC141633  OR Homoharringtonine OR "Fu Er” OR Synribo)[all]

The following multi-word, drug names were “not found” by PubMed and were removed to avoid retrieval of irrelevant results:
“CGX 635”, “NSC 141633”, “Chuan Shan Ning”, “Gao Rui Te”, “Hua Pu Le”, “Jin Nuo Xing”, “Sai Lan”, “Wo Ting”

Drug names removed from the search because of common but irrelevant meanings that caused retrieval of irrelevant results:  HHT

Check your search history

It's often helpful to compare the number of results retrieved by an original search to the number retrieved by the revised search.

• Click on the "Advanced search" link.  

• When you reach the "Advanced Search" page, look at the "History" table.

• Removal of the "Quoted phrases not found" reduced the result number from 2128 to 2090.
• Removal of HHT, which had many irrelevant meanings (hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, etc.) reduced the result number to 515.

Assignment

If you are completing this tutorial because you are enrolled in PHPR 562, you must submit an assignment.

• Copy the search history table.

• Paste it in your Word document -- under the removed terms list/s.

• Save your Word document -- you may want to use your name in the document's name.

• Submit your completed assignment document through Canvas ("Tutorial work -- Drug Portion of Your FSA Search").

• You and a classmate will check your search for errors during an upcoming class session. 

Certificate

Please enter your name and email address to retrieve a copy of your completed quiz.

You can enter multiple email addresses separated by commas. If you are doing this for a class, you may need to enter your instructor's email address also.

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