4. MESH: The Key to MEDLINE/PubMed

The key to MEDLINE/PubMed is a controlled vocabulary system called MeSH. MeSH is the acronym for medical subject headings.

The MeSH system is used for cataloging and searching the biomedical literature. It imposes uniformity and consistency to the indexing of journal articles. The main advantage of the MeSH system is that it ensures retrieval of relevant articles even when authors have used different words or spellings to describe the same topic.

For example: Trisomy 21, Down's Syndrome, and Down Syndrome are all possible synonyms for the same topic. The MeSH term: Down Syndrome[MeSH] covers all of the variations - saving you from having to type them all into your search.