Medline is a highly selective database of medical literature produced by the US National Library of Medicine. It indexes reputable medical journals using controlled vocabulary terms called Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to catalog articles. MeSH terms allow searching by concept and building complex search strategies with Boolean operators. Search results can be refined based on study type, population, and other limits.

1. Developed by US National Library of Medicine (NLM)
this life sciences and biomedicine database uses
specialist Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to index
highly reputed medical journals.
Ability to map to MeSH search terms and to build up
your search strategy with inbuilt Boolean operators.
A range of ways to refine and limit search results based
on types of studies, cohort study groups and more.
MeSH topics and sub-topics provide a range of ways to
focus in on very specific medical areas of research.
University Library

2. Search OneSearch for the Medline Database
Both Medline and Pubmed are produced by the US National Library of Medicine.
• Medline (1960) represents a more highly selected range of medical journals
which have been catalogued using MeSH – Medical subject headings.
• PubMed (1996) contains all of Medline plus articles from Journals considered out
of scope for Medline and some full-text OA journals.

3. Begin your
Advanced
search in
Medline for
your specific
drug.
Make sure
“Map to Search
Term” is ticked.
Beginning your
Search in Medline

4. These are the terms that
map to “Peramivir”
There does not seem to be a term that matches exactly.
Look at the Scope information notes to check.
I have selected only “anti-viral agents” to keep my search broad at this point.

5. I have chosen
to focus on
adverse effects
This is an example of the range of sub-topics available for the topic of
Antiviral Agents

6. The anti-viral search results load into the “search history” area
Next I will search
for my drug as a
“keyword”

7. Joining with AND limits results to those that include both concepts so focusing
in on the adverse effects of “Peramivir”
Here are my two separate concept searches
Clicking on each will allow me to combine them with AND or OR

8. In this third Medline concept search I am doing a broad search for “Antiviral
Agents” and using the available “Additional Limits”

9. You can see there are a wide range of other limits you can apply
You might limit
to ‘Animals’ to
identify
predictive
models

10. In this next search strategy “peramivir OR rapivab” searched as key words are combined
with the broad MeSH subject heading for “antiviral agents”
The LH limits in the results list
are used to further limit to “Review”
publication types.

11. A sample of a similar search in PubMed