CAM Information

New database makes it simple to search for dietary supplements research

Searching for information specifically about dietary supplements can be arduous. The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) at NIH has made the task easier thanks to the new PubMed Dietary Supplement Subset.

The PubMed Supplement is a partnership between ODS and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to create a dietary supplement subset of NLM’s PubMed scholarly biomedical journal search database. PubMed (http://www.pubmed.com) includes links to abstracts and full text articles and other related resources.

This subset will limit searches to articles related to dietary supplement research including research on vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and botanical and herbal supplements in human nutrition and animal models.

This database replaces a previous resource, The International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS), which was a collaboration between ODS and the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library. The replacement occurred to create a more user friendly and comprehensive database. While the majority of citations in the IBIDS originally came from PubMed, ODS worked with NLM to create an even more comprehensive search strategy to better limit searches to dietary supplement- related citations, resulting in the PubMed Dietary Supplement Subset.

For more information about this resource and guidance on sample searches and search strategies visit the ODS web page: http://ods.od.nih.gov/Research/PubMed_Dietary_Supplement_Subset.aspx