United States National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

Fact Sheet
Drug Information Portal

The Drug Information Portal at http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov is a free web resource from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) that provides an informative, user–friendly portal to current drug information for over 15,000 drugs. Links to sources span the breadth of NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other government agencies. Current information regarding consumer health, clinical trials, AIDS–related drug information, MeSH® pharmacological actions, PubMed® biomedical literature, and physical properties and structure is easily retrieved by searching on a drug name. A varied selection of focused topics in medicine and drug–related information is also available from displayed subject headings.

The basic name–search/retrieval architecture is provided by NLM’s Chemical Identification/Dictionary, ChemIDplus®. The Drug Portal contains over 194,000 unique searchable drug names and their synonyms. Successful searching is further enhanced by a spellchecker which offers suggestions for misspelled drug names.

Pharmacological actions (PA) indicate how a drug behaves in the body by describing intended chemical actions and uses that result in prevention, treatment, cure or diagnosis of a condition or disease. Drugs usually have multiple actions and uses. From the results page, the listed categories of MeSH® pharmacological actions can be selected and then searched to identify other drugs associated with this category or classification. When a specific category is selected, the corresponding pharmacologic action and description can be displayed from a listing of MeSH® PA categories.

Web Access/Searching

Users can search by a drug’s brand/trade name (e.g., Valium) or generic/common name (e.g., Diazepam). The search will display a unique drug profile created from links to online resources listed in the table below. More inclusive searches can be performed by using the asterisk (*) to truncate a drug's name at the beginning or at the end of the term. Searching is also available for drug name fragments by enclosing the search term within asterisks.

Resource Name Type of Information Provided
MedlinePlus® Drug Drug information
MedlinePlus® Topics Consumer health topics
AIDSinfo® HIV/AIDS treatment
LactMed Effects of drugs on breastfeeding mothers and infants
HSDB® Peer-reviewed biological and physical data
Dietary Supplements Labels Database Ingredients/label information for dietary supplements
Medline/PubMed¤ References from biomedical and scientific journals
TOXLINE® References from toxicological journals
DailyMed® Manufacturers drug label for marketed drugs
ClinicalTrials.gov Patient studies for drugs and treatment
PubChem Biological activities and chemical structures
NIAID ChemDB Biological activities against HIV/AIDS
ChemIDplus® Toxicological and chemical resource locator
Drugs@FDA Information from the US Food & Drug Administration
DEA Information from the US Drug Enforcement Administration
USA.gov Information from other government resources

Further Information

For information about the Drug Information Portal content and search strategies, contact:

Specialized Information Services
National Library of Medicine
Two Democracy Plaza, Suite 510
6707 Democracy Boulevard, MSC 5467
Bethesda, MD 20892-5467
FAX: (301) 480-3537
Telephone: (301) 496-1131
e-mail: tehip@teh.nlm.nih.gov
URL: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov

For information on NLM services, contact:

Customer Service
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894
Telephone: 1-888-FINDNLM (1-888-346-3656) or (301) 594-5983
e-mail: custserv@nlm.nih.gov

A complete list of NLM Fact Sheets is available at:
(alphabetical list) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsheets.html
(subject list): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsubj.html

Or write to:

FACT SHEETS
Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20894

Phone: (301) 496-6308
Fax: (301) 496-4450
email: publicinfo@nlm.nih.gov

Last reviewed: 09 March 2009
Last updated: 24 February 2009
First published: 06 February 2008
Metadata| Permanence level: Permanent: Stable Content