Finding Research on Medical Conditions

One way to find information on medical conditions, which I briefly discussed on in my post How to Cure Yourself on the Internet, is to use PubMed. You can do this in two major ways:

1. Searching for the name of a certain disease or condition using search terms, such as “obsessive compulsive disorder”

2. Using search terms based on medical subject headings, such as “obsessive compulsive disorder”[mh]

The first technique is fairly self-explanatory.

In the second technique, the [mh] term technique tells PubMed to search for papers and studies that are indexed with Medical Subject Headings. You can find medical subject headings to add to your search at this page: MeSH

Here’s an example:

1. Go to the MeSH page

2. Search for a condition, like obsessive compulsive disorder

3. Click the “Add to search builder” button on the top right of the page

4. Click the “Search PubMed” button

The checkboxes on the page let you narrow the search down to studies that focus on diet therapy, drug therapy, genetics, prevention, therapy, and more topics relating to the certain medical condition.

If there is more than one result when you search for a condition, such as this search for depression, you can select checkboxes for multiple results and then click on the “Add to search builder” button to add multiple subject headings to your search.

Here are some examples of all of the papers indexed under certain medical conditions. Some of the search results are incredibly extensive, but they can be narrowed down using the filters on the left part of the page. You can also narrow down searches by using the checkboxes on the initial MeSH search results page, as seen in the second step of the steps above. This would look like: “obsessive-compulsive disorder/genetics”[Mesh]

Here are some examples of finding papers using MeSH terms:

1. “acquired immunodeficiency syndrome”[mh]

2. alcoholism[mh]

3. “alzheimer disease”[mh] OR dementia[mh]

3. “attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity”[mh]

4. “autistic disorder”[mh]

5. “bipolar disorder”[mh]

6. “brain neoplasms”[mh]

7. “diabetes mellitus, type 2″[mh]

8. “fasciitis, necrotizing”[mh]

9. “fatigue syndrome, chronic”[mh]

10. hypothyroidism[mh]