<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<Paper uid="W04-3105">
  <Title>Mining MEDLINE: Postulating a Beneficial Role for Curcumin Longa in Retinal Diseases</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
6 Conclusions
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We applied our implementation of Swanson's open discovery algorithm to the problem of identifying novel disease or problem contexts in which substances might have a therapeutic role. We used our methods to investigate the potential of turmeric or Curcumin Longa. Our analysis identifies a ranked list of problems for which treatment with curcumin may be beneficial with the top ranked entry pointing to retinal diseases. Guided by our algorithm, further analysis of the literature by our expert user (a geneticist) yielded good evidence in support of the hypothesis that curcumin, taken in the diet or applied topically, could prove beneficial in cases of diabetic retinopathies, ocular inflammation and glaucoma.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> In future work we will analyze the other suggestions made by our open discovery methods. For example, the second suggestion is problems related to the spinal cord.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The analysis will again focus on genetic mechanisms that could potentially connect curcumin with the problems.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> We will also explore methods to automate query expansion for the search in step 5 of the algorithm. One limitation of the discovery process concerns the evidence gathering phase when analyzing individual C terms. This process is manual and involves significant investment of time and intellect toward sifting through the literature and collecting evidence relevant to the hypothesized connections. In the next phase of our work we plan to study methods to assist in this phase.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>