Colette Hochstein,
DMD, MLS (Colette@nlm.nih.gov),
NLM, Division of Specialized Information Services
The Division of Specialized Information Services (SIS, http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) creates information resources and services in toxicology, environmental health, chemistry and HIV/AIDS. Another component of SIS, the Office of Outreach and Special Populations, seeks to improve access to quality and accurate health information by under-served and special populations. Many SIS products help to address the toxicology and environmental health information needs of the general public.
Dietary Supplements Labels Database: http://dietarysupplements.nlm.nih.gov
The National Library of Medicine has released a new resource focused on dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplements Labels Database http://dietarysupplements.nlm.nih.gov includes information from the labels of more than 2,000 brands of dietary supplements in the marketplace, including vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, and other specialty supplements.
The database is designed to help both the general public and health care providers find information about ingredients in brand-name products, including name, form, active and inactive ingredients, amount of active ingredient/unit, manufacturer/distributor information, suggested dose, label claims, warnings, percentage of daily value, and further label information.
Links to other NLM resources, such as MedlinePlus and PubMed, are provided for additional health information. In addition, links to related Fact Sheets from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Office of Dietary Supplements, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and the National Cancer Institute are also available.
Drug Information Portal Released
The Drug Information Portal (http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov/) is a new resource from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) that provides an informative, user–friendly portal to current drug information for more than 15,000 drugs. Links to sources span the breadth of NLM, National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. Current information regarding consumer health, clinical trials, AIDS–related drug information, MeSH® pharmacological actions, PubMed® biomedical literature, and physical properties and structure is easily retrieved by searching on a drug name. A varied selection of focused topics in medicine and drug–related information is also available from displayed subject headings.
The basic name–search/retrieval architecture is provided by NLM’s Chemical Identification/Dictionary, ChemIDplus®. The Drug Portal contains more than 194,000 unique searchable drug names and their synonyms. Successful searching is further enhanced by a spellchecker that offers suggestions for misspelled drug names.
Pharmacological actions (PA) indicate how a drug behaves in the body by describing intended chemical actions and uses that result in prevention, treatment, cure or diagnosis of a condition or disease. Drugs usually have multiple actions and uses. From the results page, the listed categories of MeSH® pharmacological actions can be selected and then searched to identify other drugs associated with this category or classification. When a specific category is selected, the corresponding pharmacologic action and description can be displayed from a listing of MeSH® PA categories.
TOXMAP: New Health Data, Roads
TOXMAP now includes the 2006 Toxics Release Inventory data (TRI) (http://www.epa.gov/tri/tridata/tri06/index.htm), as well as health risk information links. EPA Environmental Health news and updated cancer and other mortality data have also been added.
TOXMAP now shows more detailed roads at a variety of map scales. Roads and other reference data can be hidden from maps via the “Other Data” subtab.
Other recent changes include:
TOXMAP (http://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov) is a Geographic Information System from the Division of Specialized Information Services (http://sis.nlm.nih.gov) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov) that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory and Superfund Program.
NLM Disaster Information Management Research Center
The National Library of Medicine has released a Web resource about its new Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC). http://disasterinfo.nlm.nih.gov/
The DIMRC Web site seeks to provide access to quality disaster health information at all stages of preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery. Initially, the site will focus on NLM and NLM-supported resources and activities. It will then expand to include other sources of authoritative disaster health information.
NLM has a long history of providing health information during times of disaster. Recognizing the potential of libraries as untapped resources in preparing for disasters, and responding to the current increased need for disaster health information, DIMRC was created to aid the nation's disaster management efforts.
DIMRC is tasked with the collection, organization and dissemination of health information for natural, accidental or deliberate disasters. The Center is committed to providing this information as part of the federal effort to help prepare for, respond to, recover from and mitigate the adverse health effects of disasters. It will work with federal, state, and local government, private organizations and local communities.
DIMRC will focus its efforts on providing disaster health information resources and informatics research that will be directly beneficial for public health officials, health care providers, special populations, and the public.
Special Populations: Emergency and Disaster Preparedness
A new Web page that addresses emergency and disaster preparedness and special populations has been added to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Enviro-Health Links.
"Special Populations: Emergency and Disaster Preparedness" http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/outreach/specialpopulationsanddisasters.html provides links to selected Web sites featuring emergency preparedness for special populations. This includes people with disabilities, people with visual or hearing impairments, senior citizens, children, and women. Links to information in languages other than English are also provided.
NLM also offers other Enviro-Health Links on topics such as:
Arsenic: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/arsenicandhumanhealth.html
Biological Warfare: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/biologicalwarfare.html
Chemical Warfare: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/chemicalwarfare.html
Children's Environmental Health: http://phpartners.org/cehir/sampler.html
Indoor Air Pollution: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/indoorairpollution.html
Lead: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/lead.html
Outdoor Air Pollution: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/outdoorairpollution.html
Pesticide Exposure: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/pesticides.html
NLM Enviro-Health Links http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/envirohealthlinks.html
Radiation Event Medical Management
Radiation Event Medical Management (REMM) (http://remm.nlm.gov) is a Department of Health and Human Services Web site that seeks to assist health care professionals, primarily physicians, who may have to provide medical care during a radiation mass casualty incident. REMM provides easy to follow algorithms for diagnosis and management of radiation contamination and exposure, guidance for the use of radiation countermeasures, and a variety of other features to facilitate medical responses.
Continuing education credits (CME, CNE, CEU and CHES) sponsored by CDC are now available to REMM users (http://remm.nlm.gov/cme.htm). CE credits will be available until Jan. 15, 2009.
Mobile REMM for PDAs (Blackberry, Palm, Pocket PC) is now completed. Users can sign up to be a beta tester (e-mail: nlmremm@mail.nih.gov).
The REMM Web site will soon add more detailed information on the clinical phases of Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) as well as a new section on the cutaneous subsyndrome of ARS (with many clinical photographs), and more detailed information on the hematologic subsyndrome of ARS (http://remm.nlm.gov/ars.htm).
A set of full color wall posters displaying the major REMM clinical algorithms is now available at no charge. Send your name and address to nlmremm@mail.nih.gov (must be U.S. address; one set per requester).
WISER 3.0 Is Now Available for Windows Mobile Smartphone
WISER 3.0 for Windows Mobile Smartphone can now be downloaded at http://wiser.nlm.nih.gov
WISER plans to provide further capabilities in future releases, including additional substance category support (with more categories), additional tools/reference materials for radiologicals and chemicals, and biological mode (biological substance list and related tools and reference materials).
Carcinogenic Potency Database - Now Accessible via TOXNET
CPDB, the Carcinogenic Potency Database, (http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?CPDB.htm) was developed by the Carcinogenic Potency Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It reports analyses of animal cancer tests on 1,547 chemicals. Results for each chemical are now searchable via the National Library of Medicine Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET®). http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/
CPDB includes 6,540 chronic, long-term animal cancer tests (both positive and negative for carcinogenicity) from the general published literature as well as from the National Cancer Institute and the National Toxicology Program. Such tests are used in support of cancer risk assessments for humans. Information that is important in the interpretation of bioassays is reported in CPDB for each experiment.
Users can search for results on each chemical in TOXNET via chemical name or name fragment, or by Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number (RN). Results include a summary for each sex-species tested, including carcinogenicity, target organs, and carcinogenic potency values. Detailed results from each experiment on the particular chemical are given in a plot format suitable for screen viewing. Chemical structure, InChI (http://www.iupac.org/inchi/), and SMILES codes (http://www.daylight.com/smiles/) are reported.
CPDB is also available in several formats that combine results for all chemicals, including summary tables and formats that can be read into statistical databases. Links to these are available via TOXNET, on the CPDB support page "Overview" (http://potency.berkeley.edu/).