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Several optimised search strategies have been developed in Medicine, and more recently in Occupational Medicine. Aim of this study is to identify efficient PubMed search strategies for the study of putative environmental determinants of a disease.

We compiled a list of search terms (either Medical Subjects Heading [MeSH] or non-MeSH) seeming pertinent to exposure to pollutants as determinants of diseases in general population. We estimated proportions of potentially pertinent articles to formulate two search strategies (one “more specific”, one “more sensitive”). We applied these strategies to retrieve information on the putative environmental determinants of three diseases: autoimmune disease, sudden death and congenital heart defects. We evaluated the number of needed to read (NNR) abstracts to identify one potentially pertinent article in the context of these pathologies.

The …