Literature-related discovery: Potential treatments and preventatives for SARS

Literature-related discovery: Potential treatments and preventatives for SARS

Literature-related discovery (LRD) is the linking of two or more previously disjoint concepts in order to produce novel, interesting, plausible, and intelligible connections (i.e., potential discovery). LRD has been used to identify potential treatments or preventative actions for challenging medica...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Technological forecasting & social change 2011-09, Vol.78 (7), p.1164-1173
Main Author: Kostoff, Ronald N.
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Disease control
Diseases
Infectious disease
Literature-based discovery
Literature-related-discovery
Medical
Medical services
Medical treatment
Medicine
Pandemics
Progressions
Protection
Radical discovery
Radical innovation
SARS
SARS coronavirus
Semantics
Severe acute respiratory syndrome
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
Studies
Technological forecasting
Text mining
Texts
Treatment Methods
Twenty First Century
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Summary:Literature-related discovery (LRD) is the linking of two or more previously disjoint concepts in order to produce novel, interesting, plausible, and intelligible connections (i.e., potential discovery). LRD has been used to identify potential treatments or preventative actions for challenging medical problems, among myriad other applications. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was the first pandemic of the 21st century. SARS was eventually controlled through increased hygienic measures (e.g., face mask protection, frequent hand washing, living quarter disinfection), travel restrictions, and quarantine. According to recent reviews of SARS, none of the drugs that were used during the pandemic worked. For the present paper, SARS was selected as the first application of LRD to an infectious disease. The main goal of this research was to identify non-drug non-surgical treatments that would 1) prevent the occurrence, or 2) reduce the progression rate, or 3) stop/reverse the progression of SARS. The MeSH taxonomy of Medline was used to restrict potential discoveries to selected semantic classes, and to identify potential discoveries efficiently. To enhance the volume of potential discovery, databases were used in addition to Medline. These included the Science Citation Index (SCI) and, in contrast to previous work, a full text database. Because of the richness of the full text, ‘surgical’ queries were developed that targeted the exact types of potential discovery of interest while eliminating clutter more efficiently. ► Generated potential discovery for treatment and prevention of SARS. ► Developed functional query approach for targeting potential discovery. ► Used full text and functional query for expanding potential discovery database. ► Used citation linkages from initial discovery to enhance discovery generation. ► Used proximity searching for ‘surgical’ targeting of desired concepts.
ISSN:0040-1625
1873-5509