EMBASE,PUBMED, MICROMEDEX, NAPRALERT, PHARMAGKB are some of the popular pharmaceutical databases. Lets have a quick look at their services.
1. EMBASE
A very rich source of biomedical information from Elsevier Lifescience Solutions, EMBASE is a comprehensive database which is used by a majority of biomedical researchers worldwide. It allows the tracking and retrieval of information regarding diseases and drugs ranging for pre-clinical studies to important and critical information on toxicological studies. There are over 25 million records that are indexed with EMBASE and all of these have been taken from hundreds of peer reviewed journals. If you are in search of up to date information for your research, EMBASE is your likely destination.
Students, educators, physicians, pharmacists, information managers, clinicians and medical librarians are regular users of EMBASE because of its wide and in-depth coverage of data. It is a very good resource for especially those who are into clinical research and pharmacovigilance.
2. PubMed
A free to use database, maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine at National Institutes of Health, PubMed provides access to references on biomedical and life sciences information. It primarily accesses the MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, a.k.a MEDLARS online) database which has information collected from academic journals of pharmacy, nursing, medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and health care. It is a very widely used database to access full text articles which are freely available.
3. MICROMEDEX
This is another very important and widely used database by researchers from various domains. It is a product of Truven Health Analytics which is a very trusted brand in evidence based medicine references. It provides well referenced information on diseases, drugs, toxicology, alternative medicine, acute care etc to healthcare practitioners for making precise diagnosis and treatment plans.
One very unique service called the PDR Electronic Library is specifically targeted towards providing information on drugs approved by the FDA which includes side effects, drug interactions, recommended dosages, contraindications and much more.
Click here to know more about the usefulness of MICORMEDEX for Pharmacists.
4. NAPRALERT
If you are into natural product research, you will face some difficulties while searching for quality information as there are very few indexed resources which provide good information about traditional medicine. However, NAPRALERT has been a big boon for phytochemists and pharmacologists who are into testing of natural products as it is high on precise information about natural products which includes ethnopharmacology, biochemical and pharmacological information on extracts of organisms in situ, in vitro, in vivo as well as in humans.
As of today, NAPRALERT houses more than 200,000 reviews and research papers from all over the globe and also covers marine natural products. Ethnomedicinal information on almost 20,000 species is also available, which is a very rare achievement.
5. PharmaGKB
It stands for Pharmacogenomics Knowledgebase and is yet another database which is hardly known to researchers in the pharmaceutical field, but is very sophisticated in terms of the information provided. It is a very good soruce of information on genomic, genetic, cellular and molecular phenotype data and clinical records from people who have been a part of pharmacogenomic research studies. It has data pertaining to more than 3000 diseases, almost 20,000 genes and 2500 drugs as well as 53 pathways. Very useful for researchers in understanding the effect of genetic makeup in producing different reactions to drugs in different individuals.
Researchers are advised to visit these databases to collect latest biomedical information. We will keep posting about more pharmaceutical databases.