On Doctoring MEDLINE searches, with reference librarian comments, March 2000

The question was

Have chondroitin sulfates been shown to be effective, especially in treating arthritis?
Have they been shown to cause any harm?

1    *Chondroitin sulfates/tu [Therapeutic Use]    results=62   
2    limit 1 to (human and english language)    results=44   
3    *Chondroitin sulfates/ae [Adverse Effects]    results=8   
4    *Chondroitin sulfates/ad [Administration & Dosage]    results= 21   
5    limit 1 to review articles

Reference Librarian comments

Good job. It looks like you got good information on the therapeutic use, administration, and adverse effects of chondroitin. I don't see that you linked it up with arthritis, but perhaps with a rather low retrieval of references, you just decided to read through the references you got.

I think I'll try it, though...

Here's what I did:

Medline 1991 to January 2000

#
Search History
Results
1
exp *chondroitin/ or exp *chondroitin sulfates/
800
2
exp Arthritis/dh,dt [Diet Therapy, Drug Therapy]
6192
3
1 and 2
21