Janna C Lawrence

The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa provided an opportunity to improve our response to highly infectious diseases. We performed a systematic literature review in PubMed, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, EMBASE, and Web of Science of research articles that evaluated benefits and challenges of hospital Ebola preparation in developed countries. We excluded studies performed in non-developed countries, and those limited to primary care settings, the public health sector, and pediatric populations. Thirty-five articles were included. Preparedness activities were beneficial for identifying gaps in hospital readiness. Training improved health-care workers' (HCW) infection control practices and personal protective equipment (PPE) use. The biggest challenge was related to PPE, followed by problems with hospital infrastructure and resources. HCWs feared managing Ebola patients, affecting their willingness to care for them. Standardizing protocols, PPE types, and frequency of training and providing financial support will improve future preparedness. It is unclear whether preparations resulted in sustained improvements. Prospero Registration. CRD42018090988.

Searching for plant-based foods (PBFs) in PubMed is tricky because most of these are indexed in the Plants explosion, and not in the Food explosion. This has disadvantages for searching, but it also has the advantage that PBFs are classified by plant family, with related plants together. This is valuable because plant families have biochemical distinctiveness, which affects their nutrition. The hedge we use to combine with each plant family is described.

Professionals and trainees in the medical and scientific fields may receive high e-mail volumes for conferences and journals. In this report, we analyze the amount and characteristics of unsolicited e-mails for journals, conferences, and webinars received by faculty and trainees in a pathology department at an academic medical center. With informed consent, we analyzed 7 consecutive days of e-mails from faculty and trainees who voluntarily participated in the study and saved unsolicited e-mails from their institutional e-mail address (including junk e-mail folder) for medical/scientific journals, conferences, and webinars. All e-mails were examined for characteristics such as reply receipts, domain name, and spam likelihood. Journal e-mails were specifically analyzed for claims in the message body (for example, peer review, indexing in databases/resources, rapid publication) and actual inclusion in recognized journal databases/resources. A total of 17 faculty (4 assistant, 4 associate, and 9 full professors) and 9 trainees (5 medical students, 2 pathology residents, and 2 pathology fellows) completed the study. A total of 755 e-mails met study criteria (417 e-mails from 328 unique journals, 244 for conferences, and 94 for webinars). Overall, 44.4% of e-mails were flagged as potential spam by the institutional default settings, and 13.8% requested reply receipts. The highest burden of e-mails in 7 days was by associate and full professors (maximum 158 or approximately 8200 per year), although some trainees and assistant professors had over 30 e-mails in 7 days (approximately 1560 per year). Common characteristics of journal e-mails were mention of "peer review" in the message body and low rates of inclusion in recognized journal databases/resources, with 76.4% not found in any of 9 journal databases/resources. The location for conferences in e-mails included 31 different countries, with the most common being the United States (33.2%), Italy (9.8%), China (4.9%), United Kingdom (4.9%), and Canada (4.5%). The present study in an academic pathology department shows a high burden of unsolicited e-mails for medical/scientific journals, conferences, and webinars, especially to associate and full professors. We also demonstrate that some pathology trainees and junior faculty are receiving an estimated 1500 unsolicited e-mails per year.

Objectives: Since its launching in 1966, the number of citations added in PubMed grows larger each year. In this poster, we will analyze the growth of literature on food-diet-nutrition (FDN) subjects and compare the publication trend of citations for FDN subjects to that of citations for all other subjects.

Methods: We have found that the rate of growth in citations added for most subjects is fairly similar. One exception is FDN subjects. Until around 1990, the growth of citations for FDN was slower than for other subjects. However, since 1990, that rate has become notably faster. We will illustrate the steady growth in citations for general FDN terms since 1990, and we will also look at specific terms that have sparked particular research interest for shorter segments of time. For example, in the early years of increased research in interest in FDN subjects, "dietary fiber" was an especially common topic of research.

Nuts as a healthy food is a very popular research topic - Two of the top eight articles in an Altmetric.com survey of the top 100 research articles in 2013 were on nuts in the diet. With the importance of nuts, then, it’s important that articles on the subject be able to be searched efficiently in PubMed. We will offer tips on how to do this.

Like many plant-based foods, searching for nuts in PubMed is tricky. “Nuts” is a MeSH term in PubMed, but it’s not an explosion, so it often does not work to retrieve articles on specific kinds of nuts. So, for example, most articles with specific kinds of nuts in the title (walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, etc) are not indexed with the MeSH term “nuts.” Another problem is that nuts (and other plant-based foods) are often only indexed by their botanical name and with no nutrition-related indexing. In our poster, we will look at search examples for different kinds of nuts and discuss strategies for maximizing retrieval.

Objectives: With the surging popularity of plant-based foods, our diet is quickly moving beyond the limited "Where's the Beef?" habits of many Americans. Unlike the standard meat-based diet, which includes just a few kinds of meat, plant-based foods come from a wide variety of plants. In thisposter we'll examine how PubMed’s MeSH tree structure facilitates searching this rich variety.

Methods: Searching for plant-based foods (PBFs) in PubMed is tricky because most of these are indexed in the Plants explosion, and not in the Food explosion. However, combining a Food-Diet-Nutrition hedge that we have developed with the Plants explosion makes it much easier. Although having most PBFs in the Plants explosion has disadvantages, it also has an advantage - PBFs are classified in the Plants explosion by plant family, putting taxonomically related plants together. Being able to search by family in PubMed is valuable because plant families have biochemical distinctiveness, which affects their nutrition. In this poster, we’ll describe how we have been able to use our Food-Diet-Nutrition hedge to find which plant families have the most articles. We will discuss these families, and show examples of specific foods that they contain.

With increased interest in the importance of diet in preventing and treating chronic diseases, plant-based foods (PBFs) have gotten much attention in recent years. Realizing that PBFs are a more important part of the diet in many non-US countries, we will analyze the country of authors for articles in PubMed on PBFs.

To determine whether some countries have more emphasis on PBF research than others, we will use a hedge that we have developed to search in PubMed for PBFs. We will combine this with a search for the country of the authors. In addition to searching for PBFs in general, we will also search for specific types of PBFs and combine this with the country of the authors. In addition to searching for PBFs in general, we will also search for specific types of PBFs and combine this with the country of the authors.