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Research Christmas 2016: In the Literature

Nominal ISOMERs (Incorrect Spellings Of Medicines Eluding Researchers)—variants in the spellings of drug names in PubMed: a database review

BMJ 2016; 355 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i4854 (Published 14 December 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;355:i4854

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Re: Nominal ISOMERs (Incorrect Spellings Of Medicines Eluding Researchers)—variants in the spellings of drug names in PubMed: a database review

Dear Editor

We all had to endure the Prime Minister's (and other commentators) mangling of "tocilizumab" at last Friday's Downing Street coronavirus briefing. It appears that doctors requesting to use remdesivir in this Trust have similar problems with spelling - in only 3 months we are already up to 16. These are by no means the most challenging spellings of rINNs and perhaps some simplification is in order.

remdesivir 214
remdesevir 59
remdesavir 3
remdesvir 3
remedesivir 2
remdisivir 2
remdesirvir 2
remedsivir 2
remdsevir 1
remedesevir 1
remedesavir 1
ramdisivir 1
remdesevr 1
remdisovir 1
ramdesivir 1
remdesovir 1

Competing interests: No competing interests

11 January 2021
Christopher S Anton
Administrator
Yellow Card Centre West Midlands
Pharmacy Department, City Hospital, Birmingham B18 7QH

If in doubt, spell it both ways

Searching PubMed for gentamicin in title or abstract yields 22000 hits, and gentamycin yields 2200. Searching for gentamicin AND gentamycin yields 200, so authors are sometimes not consistent even within their own abstracts. I have just found an abstract containing amitriptyline, amitryptyline, and amitryptiline; but I leave it to someone else to cover all the combinations from the authors' table of possible spellings. There should be time to submit for the next Xmas BMJ.

Competing interests: No competing interests

23 December 2016
Neville W Goodman
Retired anaesthetist
Bristol, UK
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