Folklore

Documentation / Literature Evidence / PubMed Coverage

PubMed Coverage and Freshness

Folklore uses a filtered local dataset derived from NCBI PubMed baseline and update files. It is not a live mirror of PubMed and does not contain the complete biomedical literature corpus.

Current Operational Snapshot

SourceNCBI PubMed XML distribution
Indexed publications1,012,962
Extracted gene mentions403,803
Extracted variant mentions102,630
MeSH-derived phenotype records12,095,118
Configured publication years1990 onward
Snapshot verified5 August 2026

Counts describe the deployed database at the verification date and can change after a promoted ingestion. Mention counts are extracted records, not unique genes, variants, or diseases.

Freshness Is Not Guaranteed

The service supports PubMed update-file ingestion through a separate staging database and explicit promotion to production. The deployed snapshot is not guaranteed to be current with live PubMed, and this documentation does not promise a daily refresh interval. Search PubMed directly when recent or exhaustive coverage matters.

Ingestion Filters

A publication must meet all configured gates: at least one selected genetics-related MeSH descriptor, at least one accepted publication type, and a publication year within the configured range.

MeSH topics include

Mutation

Genetic Variation

Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism

DNA Sequence Analysis

Genotype

Phenotype

Alleles

Genetic Predisposition to Disease

Accepted types include

Journal Article

Case Reports

Clinical Study

Clinical Trial

Systematic Review

Meta-Analysis

Indexed Content

Publication metadata

PMID, title, abstract, authors, journal, date, publication types, MeSH descriptors, DOI, and PMC identifier when supplied by PubMed.

Gene mentions

Uppercase gene-like tokens from titles and abstracts are screened against a strict human protein-coding gene validation path during ingestion.

Variant mentions

Selected cDNA, protein, and legacy notation patterns are extracted from titles and abstracts and associated with a nearby validated gene when possible.

Phenotype records

The current ingestion path stores PubMed MeSH descriptors as phenotype names. It does not convert those records into HPO or OMIM identifiers.

Not Reliably Covered

Publications added to or corrected in PubMed after the deployed snapshot.

Articles that fail the configured MeSH, publication-type, or date gates, even when clinically relevant.

Preprints and literature sources outside PubMed.

Full article text, supplementary material, tables, figures, and paywalled methods or results.

Variant notation outside the implemented extraction patterns, complex HGVS expressions, and variants whose nearby gene cannot be established.

A guaranteed current retraction or correction status. Verify the live PubMed and journal record before clinical use.

Database Promotion

Baseline and update ingestion write to a separate staging database. A verified staging database can then be promoted to production while preserving the previous clinical-search dataset during ingestion. Promotion is an operational action, not an automatic consequence of receiving a PubMed update file.