Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 8, 2026

Composition and Distribution Analysis of Bioaerosols Under Different Environmental Conditions
Published on: January 7, 2019
PubMed search strings for the study of agricultural workers' diseases
Stefano Mattioli1, Davide Gori, Valentina Di Gregori
1Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
Background:
Several optimized search strategies have been developed in Medicine, and more recently in Occupational Medicine. The aim of this study was to identify efficient PubMed search strategies to retrieve articles regarding putative occupational determinants of agricultural workers' diseases.
Methods:
We selected the Medical Subjects Heading (MeSH) term agricultural workers' diseases and six MeSH terms describing farm work (agriculture, agrochemicals NOT pesticides, animal husbandry, pesticides, rural health, rural population) alongside 61 other promising terms. We estimated proportions of articles containing potentially pertinent information regarding occupational etiology to formulate two search strategies (one "more specific," one "more sensitive"). We applied these strategies to retrieve information on the possible occupational etiology among agricultural workers of kidney cancer, knee osteoarthritis, and multiple sclerosis. We evaluated the number of needed to read (NNR) abstracts to identify one potentially pertinent article in the context of these pathologies.
Results:
The "more specific" search string was based on the combination of terms that yielded the highest proportion (40%) of potentially pertinent abstracts. The "more sensitive" string was based on use of broader search fields and additional coverage provided by other search terms under study. Using the "more specific" string, the NNR to find one potentially pertinent article were: 1.1 for kidney cancer; 1.4 for knee osteoarthritis; 1.2 for multiple sclerosis. Using the sensitive strategy, the NNR were 1.4, 3.6, and 6.3, respectively.
Conclusion:
The proposed strings could help health care professionals explore putative occupational etiology for agricultural workers' diseases (even if not generally thought to be work related).
More Related Videos
08:36Empirical, Metagenomic, and Computational Techniques Illuminate the Mechanisms by which Fungicides Compromise Bee Health
Published on: October 9, 2017
09:44RNAi-mediated Control of Aflatoxins in Peanut: Method to Analyze Mycotoxin Production and Transgene Expression in the Peanut/Aspergillus Pathosystem
Published on: December 21, 2015
Related Concept Videos
Investigation of Disease Outbreaks
Microorganisms in Agriculture and Food industry
Chi-square Analysis
The chi-square test was developed by Pearson in 1990.
The first step of performing a Chi-square analysis is to establish a null hypothesis, which assumes that there is no real...
Genome-wide Association Studies-GWAS
GWAS does not require the identification of the target gene involved in...
Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms-SNPs
Cancer Prevention
Some...