Abstract text (incl. figure legends and references)
Background Case Reports and clinical trial research represent two important categories of literature in headaches research. MeSH terms are controlled vocabulary used to document medical literature. This project seeks to document the demographic of case reports and clinical trial publication in PubMed through the use of MeSH keywords. Methods Using PubMed API, a search is done for "headache" case reports from 1966 to 2022. Basic information, including article abstract, article ID, and article MeSH keywords for each PubMed entry is then downloaded. The frequency of all unique MeSH keywords are tallied. The same method is applied for a search of "headache" clinical trials publications from 1991 to 2022. Both searches, download, as well as analysis are done through Python and Haskell languages. Results We downloaded 22,658 case reports and 9,897 clinical trial abstracts as well as their MeSH terms between January 8th, 2022 and January 12th, 2022. As expected, among both case reports and clinical trials, some of the most common MeSH terms are "Human", "Male", "Female", "Adult" and "Headache". For case reports, "Brain Neoplasm", "Meningitis", "Intracranial Aneurysm", "Hematoma", and "Subarachnoid hemorrhage" are the top 5 most frequently reported diseases. Among clinical trials, "Migraine Disorders", "Hypertension", "Tension Type Headaches", "Neoplasm", and "Depressive Disorders" are the top 5 most frequently reported diseases. Conclusion A survey of topics of PubMed Case Reports and Clinical Trials in Headaches is possible through the use of MeSH terms. Case reports in headaches appear to focus on secondary headache conditions. Clinical trial literature in headaches, with the exception of neoplasm, appears to involve migraine, tension type headaches as well as their associated co-morbidities.