Toxicology and Pharmacology Literature

This section provides tips for selecting resources and using a controlled vocabulary for searching toxicology and pharmacology information. For a general PubMed searching tutorial and a comprehensive list of suggested resources, see:

• PubMed Tutorial
• Toxicology and Pharmacology Resources

Before searching the journal literature, be familiar with the type of substance you have.

• Toxin, Chemical, or Poison
• Environmental Hazard
• Drug

Knowing this in advance will help you decide which types of literature will be available for your topic. For example, you will find evidence about drug treatments in clinical trial and randomized controlled clinical trial literature; but the scope varies for studies about human effects of toxins and chemicals, see example.

Example Research Question -

What are the toxic effects of benzene on humans and its association with cancer?

Background -

• Benzene is used as a solvent and has been commonly identified as an occupational risk, but smoking tobacco products has also been identified as a risk.

What kinds of information can I find?

Materials Safety Data Sheets – information about the chemical, health effects (acute/chronic)
TOXNET: Hazardous Substance Databank

• After browsing HSDB, we found a possible link between benzene and leukemia.

MEDLINE - Use the Mesh database to search for journal literature by exposure and/or disease names.
PubMed MEDLINE

• PubMed Basic
  • Leukemia [Mesh]
  • Benzene/Adverse Effects [Mesh]
  • Carcinogens [Mesh]
• PubMed Advanced: Limit your search by types of evidence
  • Animal testing - search literature in PubMed and limit to *Animals
• Epidemiology - case-control and cohort studies will contain information about effects of toxins or chemicals on humans.
• Cross-Sectional Studies OR Epidemiologic Studies OR Case-Control Studies OR Retrospective Studies OR Cohort Studies OR Longitudinal Studies OR Follow-up Studies OR Prospective Studies OR Comparative Study
• If you are searching by disease name for possible toxic etiology, try searching the following: Leukemia/epidemiology [Mesh] OR Leukemia/etiology [Mesh]
• Evidence Based Medicine Reviews of the Literature - EBM Reviews
  • This includes systematic literature reviews of studies about prevention and treatment of diseases. You can find reviews of diseases that discuss possible toxin or chemical etiologic pathways.
• Mortality Statistics in US - National Center for Health Statistics

Drug a Poison?

A drug can become a poison if overdose occurs either by medication error, accidental overdose, or suicide. In the literature, "poison" or "toxicity" are available subheadings for MESH drug names, chemicals, and industrial materials for human or animal exposures. Drugs are indexed in MEDLINE by the generic drug name. Use Lexi-Comp drug look-up to find the generic name for the trade or brand name of a drug. Lexi-Comp

If searching for a chronic disease link to a particular chemical or drug, try using the subheading "adverse effects" - events occurring at the recommended dosage or threshold. This will find literature about adverse effects over long-term use of an exposure and may provide good information about chronic associations.

Some information obtained from NLM Toxicology Tutor I

updated: 05/22/2008