{"id":5802,"date":"2016-12-06T20:26:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T20:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/needtoknow\/?p=1152"},"modified":"2016-12-06T20:26:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T20:26:13","slug":"pubmed-food-problem-cranberry-cranberries-2016-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/2016\/12\/06\/pubmed-food-problem-cranberry-cranberries-2016-update\/","title":{"rendered":"PubMed Food Problem: Cranberry & Cranberries – 2016 Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Because most plant-based foods are under \u201cplants\u201d instead of \u201cfood\u201d in PubMed, articles on cranberries may not be retrieved in a search for Food.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Eric Rumsey, Janna Lawrence and Xiaomei Gu<\/p>\n

Part of the problem in searching for food in PubMed is that it’s often the case that there’s a fuzzy border between between food and medicine. \u00a0\u00a0A food that is enjoyed for its taste and general nutritional benefits may have properties that make it therapeutic for specific health conditions. A good example of this is cranberries, and cranberry juice, which may have benefits for prevention of urinary tract infections.<\/p>\n

As with most plant-based foods<\/a>, in MeSH indexing, cranberry is in the Plants<\/i> explosion, and it’s not in the Diet, Food, and Nutrition\u00a0<\/em>explosion. Fortunately, most articles on cranberries and cranberry juice are assigned some Diet, Food, and Nutrition\u00a0<\/em>indexing terms so that they are retrieved in searches for the explosion. For instance, articles on cranberry juice are often under Beverages<\/i>, and some articles on cranberries are under Fruit<\/i> or Dietary supplements<\/i>.\u00a0However, there is still a significant number of relevant articles on the subject that are missed.<\/p>\n

To show examples of cranberry-related articles that are not retrieved by the\u00a0Diet, Food, and Nutrition\u00a0<\/em>explosion,\u00a0we searched for cranberry or cranberries in the article title, limited to human, and retrieved 391 articles. We then combined this with\u00a0the Diet, Food, and Nutrition<\/em>\u00a0explosion. This retrieved 269 articles — 69% of the cranberry\/cranberries articles, which is a fairly good retrieval. But still, it’s certainly notable that there are 122 articles that are not retrieved, many of which appear to be very much on target, that don’t contain any Diet, Food, and Nutrition\u00a0<\/em>MeSH terms. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n