Literature-Related Discovery: Potential Treatments for SARS

Literature-related discovery (LRD) is the linking of two or more literature concepts (that have not been linked previously in the literature; i.e., disjoint) in order to produce novel, interesting, plausible, and intelligible connections (i.e., potential discovery). The open discovery systems (ODS) component of LRD starts with an unsolved problem, and generates solutions to that problem through potential discovery. ODS LRD has been used to identify potential treatments or preventative actions for challenging medical problems, among myriad other applications. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was the first pandemic of the 21 century. The appearance of SARS seems to have involved: 1) a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV (e.g., horseshoe bats and/or Chiroptera as one wildlife reservoir); 2) transmission to intermediate hosts (e.g., civet cats, racoon dogs); 3) human contact with these intermediate hosts in Southern China (Guangdong Province, Fall 2002) and subsequent cross-species transmission of the coronavirus to humans; 4) transmission of the virus through both non-hospital personal contact and hospital staff contact; and, 5) global transmission of the virus via travelers from affected regions in Asia to other countries. SARS was eventually controlled through increased hygienic measures (e.g., face mask protection, frequent hand washing, living quarter disinfection), travel restrictions, and quarantine. According to recent reviews of SARS, none of the drugs that were used during the pandemic worked. For the present paper, SARS was selected as the first application of LRD to an infectious disease. The first goal of this research was to identify non-drug nonsurgical treatments that would 1) prevent the occurrence, or 2) reduce the progression rate, or 3) stop/reverse the progression of SARS. The MeSH taxonomy of Medline was used to restrict potential discoveries to selected semantic classes, and to identify potential discoveries efficiently. The second goal was to generate large amounts of potential discovery in more than an order of magnitude less time than required for the author‟s previous Raynaud‟s Phenomenon LRD study. To enhance the volume of potential discovery, databases were used in addition to Medline. These included the Science Citation Index (SCI) and a full text database for the first time. Because of the richness of the full text, „surgical‟ queries were developed that targeted the exact types of potential discovery of interest while eliminating clutter more efficiently. © The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved