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Table 2 8-SPT as an example of how variation in chemical nomenclature affects information retrieval. Here, Ovid was used to map 5 variations of the chemical name 8-SPT to subject headings. Only adenosine and theophylline were common to each variant tested. 8-SPT is an adenosine receptor antagonist. For comparison, PubMed retrieved 341 unique records when using each of the keywords separated by "OR" in the query.

From: A scalable machine-learning approach to recognize chemical names within large text databases

Chemical Name mapped to term(s)

8-p-sulphophenyltheophylline

8-sulphophenyltheophylline

8-p-sulfophenyltheophylline

8-SPT

8SPT

Adenosine

X

X

X

X

X

Adenosine Triphosphate

 

X

 

X

X

Aorta

 

X

   

Autonomic Nervous System

X

    

Cerebellum

  

X

  

Cerebral Cortex

X

    

Coronary Circulation

  

X

  

Coronary Vessels

   

X

 

Creatine Kinase

    

X

Endothelium, Vascular

 

X

   

Heart

   

X

 

Hippocampus

    

X

Hyperhomocysteinemia

   

X

 

Iris

X

    

Muscle Contraction

X

    

Muscle, Smooth

  

X

  

Myocardial Reperfusion Injury

    

X

Neurons

    

X

Neutrophils

  

X

  

Parasympathetic Nervous System

X

    

Phenethylamines

 

X

   

Rats, Wistar

   

X

 

Receptors, Adrenergic, alpha-1

X

    

Receptors, Cell Surface

  

X

  

Receptors, Purinergic

X

 

X

X

 

Receptors, Purinergic P1

 

X

X

X

 

Receptors, Purinergic P2

 

X

   

Spinal Cord

 

X

   

Synaptic Transmission

X

    

Theophylline

X

X

X

X

X

Vasodilation

 

X

 

X

 

Xanthines

  

X

  

# of documents retrieved via PubMed

22

251

47

297

15