Conducting literature searches on Ayurveda in PubMed, Indian, and other databases.

BACKGROUND: Literature searches for articles on Ayurveda provide special challenges, since many of the Indian journals in which such articles appear are not indexed by current medical databases such as PubMed and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials.

AIM: The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive search strategy on Ayurveda topics and to map the existing databases containing Ayurveda journal publications.

METHODS: We have developed a literature search procedure that can recover the great majority of articles on any given topic associated with Ayurveda.

RESULTS: Our system is formulated in an easily reproducible fashion that all researchers can use. Using the keywords related to Ayurveda and vitiligo, we searched 41 databases that may contain complementary and alternative medicine publications. Only 11 databases yielded results; PubMed contained 9 articles. Each of 14 other databases named in our search procedure averaged 23 articles. International Bibliographic Information of Dietary Supplements, for example, gave 22, of which 1 satisfied our eligibility criteria. "Annotated Bibliography of Indian Medicine" gave 47, of which 7 satisfied eligibility criteria.

CONCLUSIONS: This article proposes guidelines enabling comprehensive searches to locate all types of Ayurvedic articles, not necessarily only randomized controlled trials.