Methods for exploring the semantics of the relationships between co-occurring UMLS concepts.
Year: 2001
Type: article
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To characterize the relationships among UMLS concepts that co-occur as MeSH descriptors in MEDLINE citations (1990-1999). DESIGN: 18,485 UMLS concepts involved in 7,928,608 directed pairs of co-occurring concepts were studied. For each directed pair of concepts C1-C2: (i) the "family" of C1 was built, using the UMLS Metathesaurus, and we tested whether or not C2 belonged to C1's family; (ii) we used the semantic categorization of Metathesaurus concepts through the UMLS Semantic Network and Semantic Groups to represent the semantics of the relationships between C1 and C2. RESULTS: In 6.5% of the directed pairs, the co-occurring concept C2 was found within the "family" of C1. Detailed results are given. The most frequent co-occurrences involved "Chemicals and Drugs" and "Chemicals and Drugs", as well as "Disorders" and "Chemicals and Drugs". DISCUSSION: This work takes advantage of both symbolic and statistical information represented in the UMLS, and analyzes their overlap. Further research is suggested.
Source: PubMed
Authors: A Burgun, O Bodenreider
Institution: United States National Library of Medicine
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2128831493