USE THESE ONLINE RESOURCES to help patients and their families better understand their illnesses. These databases and other resources are provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), an arm of the National Institutes of Health.

ClinicalTrials.gov

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov

People can visit this site to learn about the latest interventions or treatments covered in previously published studies or to find studies that are actively recruiting participants. Visitors can also find useful instructions on how to find a specific study and how to read study records found on the site.

MedlinePlus

http://www.medlineplus.gov

Created for patients and their families and friends, this resource provides information on more than 1,000 diseases and conditions using conversational language. Users can learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out what clinical terms mean, and view medical videos or illustrations. MedlinePlus also includes the former Genetics Home Reference. Now called MedLinePlus Genetics, this section provides the public with information about genetic disorders and the genes or chromosomes associated with them.

PubMed

http://www.pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Available online since 1996, PubMed is a database that contains more than 32 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. PubMed visitors will often find links to full articles available on other websites, such as the publisher's site or PubMed Central.

PubMed Central (PMC)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc

A full-text archive, PMC is designed to provide permanent access to all of the NLM's content as technology evolves. PMC offers more than 6 million articles across thousands of biomedical and life sciences journals published from the late 1700s to the present.