NIH Databases

In addition to the various Institutes of Health that pubHsh professional guidelines, the NIH has designed a number of databases for professionals. Physidan-oriented resources provide a wide variety of information related to the biomedical and health sdences, both past and present. The format of these resources varies. Searchable databases, bibhographic citations. 

HSTAT is a free, Web-based resource that provides access to fuU-text documents used in healthcare dedsion-making.i These documents include chnical practice guidelines, quick-reference guides for clinicians, consumer health brochures, evidence reports and technology assessments from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), as weU as AHRQ s Put Prevention Into Practice. Simply search by medium-chain acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase deficiency (or synonyms) at the following Web site httpvytext.nlm.nih.gov. 

Coffee Break is a general healthcare site that takes a sdentific view of the news and covers recent breakthroughs in biology that may one day assist physidans in developing treatments. Here you will find a collection of short reports on recent biological discoveries. 

1 The NLM Gateway is currently being developed by the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications (LHNCBC) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 1 Adapted from HSTAT http //www.nlm.nih.gov/pub factsheetMtstat.html. 

1 Other important documents in HSTAT include the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Conference Reports and Technology Assessment Reports the HIV/AIDS Treatment Information Service (ATIS) resource documents the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (SAMHSA/CSAT) Treatment Improvement Protocols (TIP) and Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (SAMHSA/CSAP) Prevention Enhancement Protocols System (PEPS) the Public Health Service (PHS) Preventive Services Task Force s Guide to Clinical Preventive Services the Independent, nonfederal Task Force on Community Services Guide to Community Preventive Services and the Health Technology Advisory Committee (HTAC) of the Minnesota Health Care Commission (MHCC) health technology evaluations. 

1 Adapted from http //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Coffeebreak/Archiv AQ.html. 

Remember, for the general public, the National Library of Medicine recommends the databases referenced in MEDLlNEp/us (http //medlineplus.gov/ or http //www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/databases.html). 

Adapted from NLM http /gateway.nlrn.nih.gov/gw/Cmd Overview.x. 

13 Adapted from HSTAT http //www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheeWhstat.html. 

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The involvement of the government in open-access plans via the NIH was a red flag to some. Gordon Hammes does not think the government should be in the publication business and does not want to see NIH funds used for this purpose. There is concern about the incompleteness of the NIH database, because half of the research in many journals is not supported by NIH and would not be added to an NIH database. 

The NIST/EPA/NIH database contains 64000 spectra, almost all of them with associated structures. This database is also available through Specinfo online on STN International. 

Sequence and molecular databases http //helix.nih.gov/science/databases.html... 

Figure 8.2 Example of a 2D substructure search. The search is for the diphenyl ether query substructure at the top of the figure, below which are shown five of the hits resulting from a search of the National Cancer Institute database of molecules that have been tested in the US government anticancer program (see URL http //dtp.nci. nih.gov/). This database is also used for the search outputs shown in Figures 8.3 and 8.4.

Sequences of the genes/cDNAs can be retrieved from databases on the Internet at various web sites. For example, GeneBank (at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, NCBI) is at http //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ Web/Search/index.html. The EMBL Nucleotide Sequence database (through the European Bioinformatic Institute, EBI) can be found at http //www.ebi.ac.uk/queries/queries.html, whilst that of the DNA Data Bank of Japan is at http //www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/. 

ToxSeek is an NLM metasearch engine and clustering tool that enables the simultaneous searching of many different toxicology and environmental health information databases and web sites. This tool includes 59 databases including the TOXNET Search tool, as well as information sources from NLM, NIH, US Government, International and other sources. 

ChemIDplus. Published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, ChemIDplus [62] is a web-based search system, http //chem.sis.nlm.nih.gov/ chemidplus/, that provides free access to structure and nomenclature authority files used for the identification of chemical substances cited in National Library of Medicine (NLM) databases. ChemIDplus also provides structure searching and direct links to biomedical resources at NLM and on the Internet. The database contains over 349,000 chemical records, over 56,000 of which include chemical structures, and is searchable by name, synonym, CAS registry number, molecular formula, classification code, locator code, and structure. 

The analysis of chemicals by reference to a set of library mass spectra was facilitated by the establishment almost 40 years ago of databases such as the NIST/EPA/NIH reference library of electron impact mass spectra (http //www.nist.gov/srd/nistla.htm). Experimentally derived mass spectra are compared to spectra in the library, and the matches are graded by various algorithms. This comparison is valid because electron impact ionization requires that the sample be vaporized and thus isolated from its sampling history. 

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