PubMed® is a valuable online resource freely provided by the National Library of Medicine which allows users to browse through more than 19 million journal article citations.

Although many visitors to their site at www.pubmed.gov use simple free-text searches to find relevant articles, more dedicated users can learn advanced searching techniques as explained by various tutorials found there.

For highly specific queries, the number of search results can be kept to a manageable number of citations.  However, for larger result sets, PubMed® does not provide a way to sort the results by subtopics.

A breakout by subtopics could help identify not only individual variables of interest, but also general classes of variables like health conditions, or risk modifiers like drugs or dietary practices, or lifestyle variables such as exercise or tobacco use, or genetic variables such as mutations or gene expression, etc.

Although this seems like a worthwhile objective for PubMed's future, in the meantime, an impressive model for such as a system has already been developed by Nutrigenetics Unlimited Inc., and is available at www.nutrigenetics.net.

The display of subtopics enables users to quickly scan through the numerous relationships which always exist in any large search result, rather than be limited to scratching the surface of recent articles only, or limited to only a narrowly-focused subset in order to keep the list short.

The key is to index each article using a controlled vocabulary of standardized indexing terms, which also allows subtopic breakouts – not only for individual topics, but also for combinations of multiple topics of the user's choosing.

For instance, when starting with a single topic, an alphabetical list (index) of subtopics can be viewed which also reports the number of citations for each subtopic, and further displays major synonyms – to assist the user in recognizing related content that would otherwise be obscured.  Subtopic listings can also be created "on-the-fly" for combinations of topics.  Stepwise use of such listings enables "drill-down" for discovery of relationships between topics which would otherwise easily escape attention.

The database at nutrigenetics.net contains an extensive subset of more than 300,000 citations from PubMed® spanning the last 10+ years, with links to more than 90,000 free PDF article copies.  These citations are relevant to the interplay between genetics, health, and our environment – including but not limited to nutrition.  Included are citations relevant to health conditions, genetic testing, nutrition research, nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, gene expression, lifestyle, stress, pharmaceuticals (pharmacogenetics), and specific genes and gene variants – plus social environment, mental health, behavior, ethics, and much more.

Big advantages to using the nutrigenetics.net database include:  1) controlled vocabulary, 2) user-selectable subtopic listings (indexes), and 3) cross-referencing with synonyms while searching and when viewing subtopics.  Use of the controlled vocabulary goes a long way toward solving the problem of inconsistent terminology, but the display of synonyms is an important feature which enables users to recognize relevant text which may otherwise be overlooked.  Without such assistance, inconsistencies in terminology is especially challenging for genes and gene variants.

The controlled vocabulary is loosely based on the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html), together with the use of standardized gene symbols  (www.genenames.org) and synonyms (www.genenames.org and www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim).

The nutrigenetics.net database is making the relationships between our genetics (nature) and our environment (nurture) much more accessible to everyone, including students, educators, journalists, companies, librarians and researchers as well as to physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, dentists, genetic counselors, and other health professionals. The goal is to inform the public, equip professionals, and encourage public/professional partnerships.

Nutrigenetics is the interplay between nutrition and your own genetics as an individual.

For example, based on your genetics , you may benefit from more, or less, of certain vitamins or minerals – such as folic acid, or iron, respectively. A closer look at nutrition and research involving genetics helps to explain this.

What's good for one person's diet is not necessarily good for another. For instance, alcohol consumption in moderation provides health benefits for most adults, but for those who carry a certain genetic variation, regular use can increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Genetics alone do not determine your future health and well-being. Instead, it's the interaction between your genetics and your environment, including but not limited to nutrition.

Abuses which one person can tolerate, like smoking, may bring horrible suffering to another because of a genetic vulnerability.  Also, personalized medicine (pharmacogenetics) has shown that drugs which are therapeutic for most people can be ineffective, or even toxic to others who carry certain genetic variations.

Genetics loads the gun, but it's the environment that pulls the trigger.

Additional environmental triggers can include things like social environment and lifestyle, as well as things like occupational hazards, pesticides and various types of pollution.

Nutrigenetics (nutrition genetics, or nutrition research with genetics research) perfectly illustrates this gene-environment interaction. Nutrition begins at birth, continues throughout life, and profoundly interacts with our individual genetics to affect our genetics health and well-being.

Our aim is to increase awareness of, and access to, the numerous reports on genetics and a nurturing environment – including but not limited to nutrition.

Our goal is to help you discover your individual genetic health and environmental needs for both nourishment and nurturing. It’s not Nature by itself, nor Nurture by itself, but the combination of Nature and Nurture^® that’s most important. 

Tapping Into Hundreds of Thousands of Articles on Nutritional Genetics and More

New genetics research information is constantly flowing. On average, references to more than 2,000 new articles are added every month to our current database of more than 285,000 article references spanning the last 10 years, as found on www.PubMed.gov.

Included are articles on genetics, health and the environment generally, plus nutritional genetics, nutrigenomics, gene expression, pharmacogenetics (individual responses to drugs), genetic testing, and the affect of genes and genetic variation on performance and well-being, disease conditions and behaviors, etc.

Each article is indexed using standardized terminology, which is loosely based on the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) or based upon the official gene symbols for genes and related proteins.

This provides very important advantages over use of the PubMed database alone, especially when faced with the inconsistent terminology used by the various authors, which is especially problematic for genes and gene variations.

Besides making it easier to find relevant articles, the standardized terminology allows users to generate their own “on-the-fly” index for any given topic, or for combinations of several topics of their choosing. The index provides an alphabetical listing of subtopics, including a count of the number of articles in each category – which can then be viewed.

Stepwise use of such indexes allows drill-down discovery of topic combinations that might otherwise easily escape attention. It enables users to go well beyond simply scratching the surface of large search result sets by providing highly focused results.

Helping Multiple Audiences Dive into Genetics Research

Our intended readership includes the public, and those who serve them. Our goal is to help anyone who would otherwise have difficulty wading through the large volume of genetics and nutrition research literature on PubMed. We also serve:

     Students – Who are also members of the public.

     Educators – Who educate the public.

     Journalists – Who inform and are advocates for the public.

     Companies – Which develop and deliver products and services for the public.

     Healthcare Professionals – Who recommend and deliver services and products to the public.

     Researchers – Who discover new information and technologies to help the public.

We at Nutrigenetics.net believe an informed and engaged public is essential to the practical application of the new genetic testing, food-nutrition research, and environmental genetics information that is being discovered daily. Progress will be hindered as long as the public remains uninformed.

For this reason, we urge the informed public to seek guidance from informed, qualified professionals to help them better understand and implement the new information that's useful for their own genetic health and well-being.

Partnerships between the informed public and informed professionals are the key to unlocking the door to a better quality of life. This includes nutrigenetics (“genetic nutrition”) and environmental genetics generally.

Finally, there should no longer be any debate about whether our health and happiness depend on either our genetics (nature) or on our environment (nurture). It's not a matter of nature versus nurture; it's the clear and continued relationship between the two that affects our genetic health and well-being.

Nature and Nurture^®