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<Paper uid="W04-3105">
  <Title>Mining MEDLINE: Postulating a Beneficial Role for Curcumin Longa in Retinal Diseases</Title>
  <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="abstr">
    <SectionTitle>
Abstract
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Text mining tools are designed to assist users with the important step of hypothesis generation. In this research we apply an open discovery process to the problem of identifying novel disease or problem contexts in which a substance may have therapeutic potential. We illustrate this discovery process by executing our open discovery algorithm with turmeric (Curcumin Longa) as the substance being investigated. The top ranking entry suggested by the algorithm is retinal diseases. Further analysis of the literature yields evidence supporting the suggested connection between curcumin and retinal diseases. In particular, curcumin influences the activation of genes such as COX-2, TNF-alpha, JNK, ERK and NF-kappaB. These genes are in turn involved in retinal diseases such as diabetic retinopathies, ocular inflammation and glaucoma. Moreover, the evidence suggests that curcumin may have a beneficial and therapeutic role in the context of these diseases. null</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>