Saturday 11 August 2012

Updated search results - more papers!

Having started to look into the PubMed results a bit more, I wondered if I could find any references to those original Strumpell and Lorrain papers, and started searching around for them.

No joy, but I did manage to find some earlier papers on HSP/FSP, and I realise that the search I was using is limited.

So, the previous search: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22Spastic%20Paraplegia,%20Hereditary%22[Majr] now reveals 599, suggesting another 10 papers have been added. The earliest paper is from 1978, which I now realise means theres not far off 100 years worth of potentially published research missing.

So, I've spent a while messing about trying to get better results. It seems there's a balance to be struck. For example, a simple search on spastic paraplegia reveals some 17,000 results, and thats because the simple search brings back every paper with both words somewhere in the entry.

A better search result happens when you put quotes round "spastic paraplegia", giving some 1500 results. If the term "strumpell lorrain" is added you add a few more, including some back to the late 1800's.

However, its clear from browsing some of the abstracts that not all of these appear to be obviously relevant, so I added in the words hereditary and familial to the search. This gives a total of 1162 papers. Search here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=((hereditary%20OR%20familial)%20AND%20%22spastic%20paraplegia%22)%20or%20%22strumpell%20lorrain%22. Earliest paper - 1946.

Next stage - to update my previous analyses of data and find out the most popular journals, years of research and published authors. Note - I have a feeling that this will end up being an iterative process, so I think I'll post this data on a page rather than in a post.


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