20 MeSH Templates
It’s easiest to construct a MeSH search if you know how PubMed’s indexers expect you to search.
- Does your search fit into one of the three search types shown below? If so, copy the search template and paste it into your Word document.
1. Drug A (Procedure A) causes Disease B
(“Drug A/adverse effects”[mesh] ) AND (“Disease B/etiology”[mesh] )
2. Drug or chemical or supplement A used to treat Disease B
(“Drug-chemical-supplement A/therapeutic use”[mesh] ) AND (“Disease B/therapy”)
3. Disease A results in occurrence of Disease B
“Disease A/complications”[mesh] AND “Disease B/etiology”[mesh]
A note about the subheadings used in the templates above:
PubMed explodes headings and subheadings. Broad subheadings retrieve articles indexed with those subheadings and the narrower subheadings in the same subheading tree.
- “adverse effects” retrieves articles indexed with. “adverse effects”, “poisoning”, or “toxicity”
- “etiology” retrieves articles indexed with “etiology”, or “chemically induced”
- “therapeutic use” retrieves articles indexed with “therapeutic use” or “administration and dosage”
- “therapy” retrieves articles indexed with “therapy” or “drug therapy”
Did you say that the search fits template #2 –
Drug or chemical or supplement A used to treat Disease B
(“Drug-chemical-supplement A/therapeutic use”[mesh] ) AND (“Disease B/therapy”)
If so, you’re correct.
You don’t know yet what subject headings or subheadings are available for the capsaicin and peripheral neuropathy concepts, but after looking at the templates, you should be hoping to produce a search similar to the following:
(“capsaicin/therapeutic use”[mesh] ) AND (“peripheral neuropathy/therapy”[mesh] )
- You might wish to copy this planned search and paste it into your Word document so that you can refer to it later.
