New Year, New MeSH

Happy 2020!

Each January brings an array of welcome changes…maybe you’re giving that whole Dry January thing a try (which might decrease alcohol consumption later in the year), or it’s a Whole30 for you, or maybe this is the year you run that marathon, since that new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology shows that those training for their first marathon may experience a reduction in vascular age.

But why do any of that when you can simply revel in the Medline Data Changes for 2020! Cheers!

Let’s cheers Happy new year 2009 by nImAdestiny is licensed under CC BY 2.0

So what sort of changes does 2020 bring to Medical Subject Headings?

97 terms were changed or deleted and replaced with current terminology (for example, Swaziland is now Eswatini, reflecting the official name change of the nation in 2018).

293 new MeSH headings and 2 new publication types joined the thesaurus this year as well. Some new headings of particular note to HHSL researchers include:

• Diet and nutrition terminology, such as Animal Proteins, Dietary, Artificially Sweetened Beverages, Edible Insects, Pork Meat, and Salads
• More granular indexing of complementary therapies, such as Cupping Therapy and Dry Needling
• New terms related to technology, such as Augmented Reality, Blockchain, Disruptive Technology, and Smart Materials
• More appropriate descriptors for groups of people, such as Indigenous Peoples, Intersex Persons, and Para-Athletes

You can review the full list here: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/2020/download/2020NewMeSHheadingsSingleColumn.pdf.

For more information about using MeSH, please visit our guide to Advanced Searching Techniques.