Drug Information Resources

A selective guide to drug information sources available in print and electronic formats for health care professionals

Web Sites | | Databases | Database Search Tips | Electronic Books

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World Wide Web Sites

* For more pharmacology & toxicology Web sites - check out the Library's Electronic Reference Desk.

  • AIDS Clinical Trials Information Service
    Federally and privately funded HIV/AIDS clinical trials information from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
  • CenterWatch Drug Directories
    This source calls itself The information source for the clinical trials industry. The following three drug directories from this site are extremely helpful:
    • Drugs approved by the FDA
      This section can be searched by year and a medical specialty, such as Cardiology.
    • Drugs Currently in Clinical Research
      According to the company, this site contains: A listing of 2,000 active drugs in Phase I - Phase III trials are profiled sometimes including NDA submissions and withdrawals. Each summary contains information about the new treatment: the branded and generic name of the new therapy, the company sponsoring the research, and the phase of the clinical trials. It can be searched by medical condition.
    • Clinical Trials Results Database
      The information in this section dates back to May, 2000 and is updated weekly. It is pulled from published materials from medical conferences, journals, and company reports. The clinical trial result summaries typically include the name and phase of the new therapy, the company sponsoring the research, a description of the trial design, and information on how well the drug has performed.
  • Clinical Trials.gov
    ClinicalTrials.gov provides patients, family members, health care professionals, and members of the public easy access to information on clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions - brought to you through a collaborative effort of NIH, NLM, and the FDA.
  • DrugTopics.com
    The online news magazine for pharmacists.
  • FDA - Food and Drug Administration - main site with news and more
    This site includes news, product reports, and safety alerts for all FDA-regulated products.
  • FDA/Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER)
    According to their Web site, CDER serves as a consumer watchdog by evaluating new drugs before they can be sold. Their goal is to ensure that prescription and over-the-counter drugs (brand name and generic) work correctly and that their health benefits outweigh the known risks. Three sections of special interest on the site, are:
  • FDA Enforcement Report Index
    A weekly report that contains information on actions taken in connection with agency regulatory activities.
  • FDA - MedWatch
    The FDA safety information and adverse-event reporting program.
  • The Institute for Safe Medication Practices
    According to their Web site, ISMP is A nonprofit organization that works closely with health care practitioners and institutions, regulatory agencies, professional organizations,and the pharmaceutical industry to provide education about adverse-drug events and their prevention. The Institute provides an independent review of medication errors that have been voluntarily submitted by practitioners to a national Medication Errors Reporting Program (MERP) operated by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) in the USA. Information from the reports may be used by USP to impact on drug standards. All information derived from the MERP is shared with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) and the pharmaceutical companies whose products are mentioned in reports.
  • Mosby's GenRx Top 200 Most Prescribed Drugs (ranked by sales volume)
    Includes information about each drug listed.
  • NIH Clinical Alerts and Advisories
    Clinical alerts are provided to expedite the release of findings from the NIH-funded clinical trials where such release could significantly affect morbidity and mortality.

    • Databases for Drug and Chemical Information

    • Biological Abstracts (BIOSIS). Silverplatter, host.
      Contains bibliographic references with abstracts from 6,000 international journals in the primary areas of agriculture and the life sciences.
    • ChemIDplus. National Library of Medicine, producer.
      This search system provides access to structure and nomenclature authority files used for the identification of chemical substances cited in National Library of Medicine databases. ChemIDplus also provides structure searching and direct links to many biomedical resources at NLM and on the Internet for chemicals of interest. The database contains over 350,000 chemical records, of which over 80,000 include chemical structures, and is searchable by Name, Synonym, CAS Registry Number, Molecular Formula, Classification Code, Locator Code, and Structure.
    • EMBASE. Elsevier, producer. An index of the biomedical literature with greater depth of indexing than MEDLINE, unique Western European journal coverage, and coverage of drug research. EMBASE searches available upon request to the UVa Health Sciences Librarians.
    • PREMEDLINE. National Library of Medicine, producer. The in-process database for MEDLINE, PREMEDLINE provides basic information and abstracts before a record is indexed with MeSH heading(s) and added to MEDLINE. New records are added daily* to PREMEDLINE. After MeSH terms, publication types, GenBank accession numbers, and other indexing data are incorporated into a PREMEDLINE record; the completed citation is added to MEDLINE. Completed PREMEDLINE records are added as citations to MEDLINE on a weekly basis.
    • OLDMEDLINE. National Library of Medicine, producer. Contains citations published in the 1958 through 1965 Cumulated Index Medicus and covers the fields of medicine, pre-clinical sciences, and allied health sciences. OLDMEDLINE is only available through the NLM Gateway. Coverage: 1958-1965.
    • MICROMEDEX. Thompson Healthcare, producer. Contains peer-reviewed full-text drug information. It is composed of several databases that can be searched separately or through an integrated index. These databases allow you to search for summaries and detailed monographs for drugs, alternative medicine, toxicological managements, reproductive risks, and acute/emergency care.
    • Toxline. National Library of Medicine, producer. This database provides toxicological, pharmacological, biochemical, and physiological effects of drugs and other chemicals.
    • TOXNET. National Library of Medicine, producer. Consists of a computerized collection of data and reference files on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, and related areas. The records are derived from about 16 secondary sources that do not require royalty charges based on usage. Entering free-text terms as they appear in titles, keywords, and abstracts of articles will retrieve citations. The portions of the database derived from MEDLINE, DART, and that portion of BIOSIS added since August 1985, may be searched using MeSH vocabulary. Chemical substances can be searched by entering their corresponding CAS Registry Numbers and/or synoyms. Coverage: 1975 to the present.
    • Web of Science. Institute for Scientific Information, producer. WOS databases include bibliographic and citation information for articles from over 5,700 science and engineering journals, 1,700 social science journals, and 1,100 arts and humanities journals. Updated weekly. It offers multidisciplinary searching and seamless access to cited reference searching. Coverage: 1987 to the present, but includes older cited references.
    • Others:
      Consider also the Cochrane Library that includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Cochrane Controlled Trials Register. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews includes reviews of health care interventions including adverse- effect information. The Cochrane Controlled Trials register contains 300,000 reports of randomized controlled trials in health care. These products are updated quarterly, but the records have no expiration dates as they are continuously updated.
    • Other important drug databases include Derwent Drug File, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts and SEDBASE (produced by Elsevier) and derived from Meyler's Side Effects of Drugs and other sources.) These last three sources are not available for end-user searching.
    • The Health Sciences Librarians will be glad to run searches for you from these databases and others for a fee. To request a database search, please fill out the Literature Request Form found on the Library's Web page or call the Reference Desk at (434) 924-5591.

    Drug Database Search Tips:

    *Also, consult the Guide to Good Searching.

    • TIP 1 - When Searching for Evidence of Safety/Adverse Events:*
      1. Identify the drug.
      2. Check for alternate names of the drug.
      3. Define the research setting in which the drug will be used.
      4. Consult reference or textbook sources as a starting point.
      5. Consult databases/indexes to locate primary sources of information for comprehensiveness and quality assurance.
      6. Choose the most appropriate sources of evidence of drug safety/adverse effects.
      7. Print your final search strategy and create a bibliography.
      8. *Special thanks to the Johns Hopkins Ad Hoc Committee on Literature Searches for permission to use their adaptation of Tips for online database comprehensive searching IN McKibbon A. PDQ: Evidence-Based Principles and Practice. Hamilton, London, St. Louis: B.C. Decker, 1999. p.208; and from comments by reviewer, Carol Lefebvre.
    • TIP 2 - Comprehensive Search Techniques:*
      1. Use multiple bibliographic databases (secondary sources) and reference (tertiary) resources.
      2. Expand the years of searching as needed - including print indexes consulted, for items that pre-date the electronic form.
      3. Have more than one set of searchers do your main searching independently - each searcher will probably retrieve relevant and unique citations.
      4. Find out how the articles that you already have are indexed and work backwards using the index terms from the original articles.
      5. Avoid the major emphasis or focus tags or search limits available in many databases.
      6. Avoid, or use the logical operators AND NOT carefully. The NOT operator can eliminate references that you are truly interested in.
      7. Ensure that your synonyms are combined with the OR operator - not AND.
      8. Avoid the use of subheadings as limiters on main subject concepts (e.g. Myocardial Infarction/diagnosis). Use other methods of limiting information, such as HUMAN.
      9. Make sure you fully understand the definitions of the terms you are using, e.g. in MEDLINE adults are anyone who is from 19 to 44 years old - anyone over 45 years of age is considered to be middle aged.
      10. When constructing search strategies, remember that indexers of the journal literature are instructed to use the most specific term available. For example, the definition of 'nutrition' may need many terms or groupings of terms (vitamins, protein restriction, and so on).
      11. Use a combination of textwords (sometimes also called keywords) and index words.
      12. For index terms expand more general terms to include specific terms or check to see that smart search systems have already done this. In PubMed click on Details to examine what the system has done.
      13. For textwords remember:
        • Appropriate truncation to get variant word endings
        • Alternative spellings
        • Differences in terminology across disciplines (bed sores and decubitus ulcers)
        • Differences across national boundaries (SIDS and Cot death)
        • Differences in historical naming (unwed mothers, Camplybacter pylori)
        • Short forms for terms (AIDS and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome)
        • Brand and generic names (Viagra and sildenafil)
      14. Make sure you use terms that are somewhat related (mortality and survival analysis).
      15. Use author searching, study names, locations, manufacturers of drugs or products.
      16. Search using opposites for some topics (e.g. if you are interested in tallness make sure you search for being short as well).
      17. Keep track of what you have done and all resources consulted. Print your search strategy.
      18. *Special thanks to the Johns Hopkins Ad Hoc Committee on Literature Searches for permission to use their adaptation of Tips for online database comprehensive searching IN McKibbon A. PDQ: Evidence-Based Principles and Practice. Hamilton, London, St. Louis: B.C. Decker, 1999. p.208; and from comments by reviewer, Carol Lefebvre.

        19. Electronic Books:

        Print Only Sources:
        There are several useful drug information texts in the Health Sciences Library that are NOT available in electronic format . They included the following:

        • Goodman and Gilman's the Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics
          Joel Hardman, et al., editors. 10th ed.
          RM300/G644/2001 Reserve Alcove
        • The Merck Index: an Encyclopedia of Chemicals, Drugs, and Biologicals
          Maryadele O'Neil, senior editor. 13th ed.
          RS51 .M5 2001 Reference, Section #11 (shelved behind Ref. Desk)
        • Unlisted Drugs. Index-Guide
          Ceased publication in 1997.HSL owns Vol.9, 1992 - Vol. 11, 1997
          Shelved with Library Indexes
        • World Pharmaceuticals Directory
          RS74.W67/1997 Reference, section #12 (shelved behind Ref Desk)

        Electronic Sources:
        *Complete List of Electronic Books at the UVa Health Sciences Library.
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