Knowledge beyond words » Use case

Use case: Is Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Greater Risk of Relapse in Childhood Multiple Sclerosis?

Valentin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:38:36 +0000

We have known for some time that vitamin D insufficiency is a risk factor for developing Multiple Sclerosis and we would like to know whether vitamin D levels influence the disease course of those who already have Multiple Slcerosis and what are the scientific articles dealing with the subject. This use case nis inspired by an article seen on ScienceDaily.

We first search for Low Vitamin D in novoseek. There are 8,916results in Pubmed and 3,714results in Free Full Text up to date.

We are interested in low Vitamin D Levels so we click on “Vitamin d” from the “Pharmacologicl Substances” category in sidebar to add it to the current search and make it more specific. We now have 4,584 results in Pubmed up to date.

Now, we need to look up for Multiple Sclerosis disease-related articles. In order to do so, we will check if it appears in the diseases category in the left sidebar. We need to click on the “more” link to see all the diseases related to the current search. Multiple Sclerosis diseases does not show up so we have to think of another search strategy.
The other way of searching for “multiple sclerosis”. It consists of typing in the search box: low vitamin d and “multiple sclerosis”. Typing the term “multiple sclerosis” between brackets will tell the system to look only for these two terms when they are mentioned together. We press search and we now have 61 results in Pubmed.

Note: in order to make the search even more specific and relevant, we can click on the “multiple sclerosis” filter that now appears at the top of the related concepts list in the Diseases category.

Last search term to be added to the current search consists of adding “children”. This will help us consult solely articles related to humans. You can either add and children in the search box or look in the sidebar where the category Organisms appears and add Homo Sapiens (showing up in 4th position) to the search. We now have 34 results in pubmed.

Those articles found in a few steps in Pubmed are satisfactory and help start working on knowing if Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Greater Risk of Relapse in Childhood Multiple Sclerosis.

We recommend you to read:

User Case: Is the Tamiflu efficient to diminish the percentage of secondary complications in children with flu?

Valentin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:29:39 +0000

This user case is inspired by a search tutorial for Pubmed (see page 61) brought to our knowledge by María, Medical Librarian from Torrevieja Hospital (Spain). We found it interesting to show how novoseek provides results as satisfactory as Pubmed in a simple and quick way.

We first search for « tamiflu » in novoseek.There are 840 results in pubmed and 144 in free full text to date.
Looking in the search details we notice that our search has been mapped to pharmacological substance « tamiflu ».
Clicking on the the term tamiflu pops up a window with complementary information. This is handy to know the synonyms (alternative names) to Tamiflu : Oseltamivir phosphate , GS 4104 are some of them.

We need to look for influenza disease to keep building our search.Obviously, it should appear in the first relevant related concepts to the previous search. Indeed, it is the first related disease to the search Tamiflu. Clicking on it will add it directly to the current search (alternatively you can click on the « i » icon and click on « add filter » as shown on image). The search is now refined and we have gone from 840 results to 639 results in Pubmed.

In this case, we are looking for Meta-Analysis publications. In science, “meta-analysis does more than just combine the effect sizes of a set of studies. It can test if the studies’ outcomes show more variation than the variation that is expected because of sampling different research participants” as explained in the Wikipedia. This should help us find publications showing the efficiency of Tamiflu to diminish the percentage of secondary complications.
We now need to select the publication type (or type or article).We click on the « bibliographics tab » and where publication type is, we click on the « more » button. Where « Meta Analysis » appears, we click on that term which is directly added to the current search. We now have gone from 639 results to 9 results in Pubmed.
The results are very satisfactory as they contain the same publications as in Pubmed. Should we need to look specifically for publication mentioning children, look for the filter “Homo Sapiens” in the related concepts tab on the left and add it to your search. We now have 5 results in Pubmed.
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We can compare now these results to Pubmed’s and we notice that we have the 3 publications found in Pubmed in novoseek results. The advantage with novoseek is that we have performed a complex search in a simple way and in no time.

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Perform an effective search with novoseek: Asperger Syndrome and Bipolar disorder in autism

Valentin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:19:10 +0000

From novoseek, the team is trying hard to deliver a quality service and make our biomedical search engine an intuitive and easy to use one as well as powerful. Every now and then we have the opportunity to help someone with a search that results a bit difficult.

Today we’ve had the chance to catch a bribe of conversation on twitter where a medical doctor was wondering if anyone knew about Asperger Syndrome and Bipolar disorder in people affected by autism. We took the opportunity to suggest him a set of results and as he was satisfied, we are bringing it to you here so you can know how to perform an effective search with novoseek, your new biomedical search engine.

A good way to look for publications about asperger syndrome and bipolar disorder in autism is to start with autism from the main search box. The results page for autism displays 10.633 publications in Medline. We should use the related concepts in the left sidebar to refine the search. As they are classified by relevance to the current search and by concept, we should be able to identify what we need quickly.

Since Aperger syndrome is a disease, I have to click on the more link just next to disease in the left column. This allows to see all the diseases related to the current search for autism. In this case the seventh one is Asperger syndrome. I can click the iicon and chose Add filter or click directly on it to add it to the current search. We now have 681 results in Medline.

I am going to repeat the process with bipolar disorder. This one is almost at the bottom of the list.We now have 12 results in Medline for the search on Asperger syndrome and bipolar disorder in autism. According to them, the medical librarian was satisfied. It could be a good start to study in this field.

By default, documents are sorted by date (newest first) and document details are shown with snippets but you can sort them by relevance and chose to see more of every publication. Just click the icons and chose to see the title, sentences or the complete abstract.

Any suggestion or question, feel free to ask us directly by commenting on the post or through our platform on uservoice