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Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a very comprehensive vocabulary to index the biomedical literature on Medline or PubMed (which is the major Biomedical literature database). MeSH is arranged into Descriptor > Concept > term hierarchy, but I still do not understand the difference between a MeSH descriptor and a MeSH concept.

For example, for Knee

  • MeSH descriptor is D007717
  • MeSH concept is M0012066 (Under the concepts section in the link)

Even after reading the description here and here, I am still not sure about the purpose of MeSH concept and MeSH descriptor.

Could anyone please shed some light on it?

Daniel Standage
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PinkBanter
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1 Answers1

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MeSH is organized into Descriptor > Concept > Term hierarchy, where all the synonymous <term>'s are grouped together under a <concept>. For example, consider the MeSH terms,

  1. Blood-Brain Barrier
  2. Hemato-Encephalic Barrier
  3. Brain-Blood Barrier

All these terms are group under the umbrella concept of "Blood-brain barrier".

PinkBanter
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