Kostoff Ronald N
Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Public Policy, USA.
Technol Forecast Soc Change. 2011 Sep;78(7):1164-1173. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2011.03.022. Epub 2011 Apr 20.
Literature-related discovery (LRD) is the linking of two or more previously disjoint concepts in order to produce novel, interesting, plausible, and intelligible connections (i.e., potential discovery). LRD has been used to identify potential treatments or preventative actions for challenging medical problems, among myriad other applications. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was the first pandemic of the 21st century. SARS was eventually controlled through increased hygienic measures (e.g., face mask protection, frequent hand washing, living quarter disinfection), travel restrictions, and quarantine. According to recent reviews of SARS, none of the drugs that were used during the pandemic worked. For the present paper, SARS was selected as the first application of LRD to an infectious disease. The main goal of this research was to identify non-drug non-surgical treatments that would 1) prevent the occurrence, or 2) reduce the progression rate, or 3) stop/reverse the progression of SARS. The MeSH taxonomy of Medline was used to restrict potential discoveries to selected semantic classes, and to identify potential discoveries efficiently. To enhance the volume of potential discovery, databases were used in addition to Medline. These included the Science Citation Index (SCI) and, in contrast to previous work, a full text database. Because of the richness of the full text, 'surgical' queries were developed that targeted the exact types of potential discovery of interest while eliminating clutter more efficiently.
文献关联发现（LRD）是指将两个或更多先前不相关的概念联系起来，以产生新颖、有趣、合理且易懂的关联（即潜在发现）。LRD已被用于识别具有挑战性的医学问题的潜在治疗方法或预防措施，以及众多其他应用。严重急性呼吸综合征（SARS）是21世纪的首次大流行。SARS最终通过加强卫生措施（如佩戴口罩、勤洗手、对居住场所进行消毒）、旅行限制和隔离得以控制。根据对SARS的近期综述，大流行期间使用的药物均未起作用。在本论文中，SARS被选为LRD在传染病方面的首个应用实例。本研究的主要目标是确定非药物、非手术的治疗方法，这些方法要能够：1）预防SARS的发生，或2）降低其进展速度，或3）阻止/逆转SARS的进展。利用医学主题词表（MeSH）分类法将潜在发现限制在选定的语义类别中，并高效识别潜在发现。为了增加潜在发现的数量，除了Medline之外还使用了其他数据库。这些数据库包括科学引文索引（SCI），与之前的工作不同的是，还使用了一个全文数据库。由于全文内容丰富，因此开发了“外科手术”相关的检索词，这些检索词针对感兴趣的潜在发现的精确类型，同时更有效地排除干扰信息。
