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Topic: semi-OT: Data Mining and Medical Research (Read 925 times) |
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floridian
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semi-OT: Data Mining and Medical Research
« on: Oct 18th, 2003, 7:37am » |
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Just came across this article on data mining. It mentions medical research, in particular, a doctor that used pubmed to research migraines.
Quote:The best-known anecdote about text mining involves Don R. Swanson, a professor emeritus of information science at the University of Chicago who in the 1980's decided to take a deep look at medical literature on migraines. Starting only with the word "migraine," he downloaded abstracts from 2,500 articles from Medline and looked closely at the titles. When certain concepts caught his eye, he conducted new searches to see whether that concept existed in the full texts of other articles related to migraines.
In one instance, a reference to a neural phenomenon called "spreading depression" caused him to look for articles with that term in their titles. Reading those pieces, he found that magnesium was often mentioned as preventing this spreading depression. Other connections to magnesium deficiencies started to appear, so he dug further. In a 1988 paper on his research, he wrote, "One is led to the conjecture that magnesium deficiency might be a causal factor in migraine."
Today, Dr. Swanson's work is considered significant both for migraine studies and for text mining. The link between the headaches and magnesium deficiency was soon backed up by actual experiments. |
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New York Times articles are only open for a week - after that you need to pay.
http://nytimes.com/2003/10/16/technology/circuits/16mine.html
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Bob_Johnson
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Re: semi-OT: Data Mining and Medical Research
« Reply #1 on: Oct 18th, 2003, 12:29pm » |
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WWW.HEADACHEPAINFREE.COM The content of this site has been expanded since I first posted it. It now covers several types of headache and a more general coverage of medications. It remains, to my knowledge, the best single source of information on the use of magnesium for headache--both for prevention and as a treatment during an active cycle.
Magnesium as a preventive treatment for CH is the main value of this site. It appears that magnesium has been used in Europe for some years for this purpose and I've posted one medical report about using IV magnesium to abort headaches which would not repond to the usual medications.
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Reports from folks here have been few in number and mixed in terms of results. The site (above) is the best single one I've seen with info on using/doses/forms of magnesium. The literature has enough positives to make it worth a try and costs are modest. It is not, clearly, a magic bullet.
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Bob Johnson
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