by Cindy Schmidt, M.D., M.L.S.
Created 07/2014
Updated 07/18/2019
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Instructions
After completing this tutorial you will have:
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.
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
To reach the Martindale's monograph for nilotinib:
The link to the "omacetaxine" monograph in Martindale's is shown in the screenshot below:
-- and pasting it into a 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.
The hyphens/dashes are always used in CAS registry numbers. You do not need to worry about alternate forms of CAS numbers.
-- and pasting the number into the Word document.
The screenshots below show a "Note" containing a name for omacetaxine --
-- and pasting this name into the Word document.
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.
If these are listed, do they differ (even by a single character) from the names already in your document?
The screenshot below shows copying of the international nonproprietary (foreign generic) names for omacetaxine. Note the avoidance of names in foreign scripts.
-- and pasting into the Word document.
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.
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.
1. You now have completed the first step in creating a drug keyword search, gathering the alternate terms for the drug.
2. Remove any non-essential words or symbols,
In your word document,
The result of this process is shown for the omacetaxine search in the screenshot below:
In the screenshot below, omacetaxine names containing spaces have been enclosed in quotes.
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
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
(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]
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:
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]
To test your search in PubMed:
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.
If there are any space-containing, drug names in the "Quoted phrase not found:" list,
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.
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”
Look again at the PubMed "Search Details" page.
This time, look down to the "Translations" section.
Do the translations make sense for your search?
[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]
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.
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.
Drug names removed from the search because of common but irrelevant meanings that caused retrieval of irrelevant results:
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]
Drug names removed from the search because of common but irrelevant meanings that caused retrieval of irrelevant results: HHT
It's often helpful to compare the number of results retrieved by an original search to the number retrieved by the revised search.
If you are completing this tutorial because you are enrolled in PHPR 562, you must submit an assignment.
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.
