Review a PubMed Citation  

• Review author contact information, the similar articles functionality, reveal assigned MeSH terms to help change or improve your search, use the cite button, and  save the article to your favorites.

PubMed’s Clinical Queries 

• Use the Clinical Queries to help focus your search on the best study designs to help answer therapy questions or etiology/harm questions or prognosis questions.  PubMed adds a search behind the scenes to help you limit to the best kind of studies for specific kinds of questions. 

• Other ways to focus include – diagnosis, clinical prediction guides, appropriateness, process assessment, outcomes assessment, etc.

Pharmacological Action:  MeSH vs. PA field 

• Tagging a pharmacological action term with [mh] targets those citations where the action of interest is indexed in the article.  So methotrexate AND antirheumatic agents[mh] will find citations which describe methotrexate as an antirheumatic agent.  Often used to identify articles that discuss the properties of the pharmacological action in conjunction with the specific drug.  This kind of search will miss the most recently added citations to PubMed. 

• Tagging a pharmacological action term with [pa] retrieves citations indexed with any drug or chemical identified as exhibiting a particular action.  So methotrexate AND antirheumatic agents[pa] will find citations which must include methotrexate AND any other indexed antirheumatic agent.  Often used with a disease or condition to find citations that include arthritis AND antirheumatic agents[pa], the substances connected to arthritis specifically.  This kind of search will miss the most recently added citations to PubMed.