Tip #35: Non-Latin Characters in PubMed
Back in January, I published "Tip #32: Non-Latin Characters in Ovid MEDLINE " which introduced my non-Latin/Roman characters investigation across databases. This week we will look at how PubMed handles the following examples: 17β-HSD (17 beta-HSD) cáncer (Spanish for cancer) سرطان (Arabic for cancer) diabético (Spanish/Italian/Portuguese for diabetic) 17β-HSD When you run the above search in PubMed, you can see that it automatically transliterates the β to "beta" from the search details. In this case, PubMed can handle Greek characters, so feel free to use them or the transliterated version in your search. Some potential variations you may also want to consider - phrase with hyphens and/or double quotes, and spacing: 17beta-HSD - 833 (same as running "17beta HSD") 17betaHSD - 927 "17 beta HSD" - 281 17 beta HSD - 374 "17-Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenases"[Mesh] - 2922 "17 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase" - 1516 17 beta-h