Searching PubMed with Biopython

search_biopython.py

# This code uses Biopython to retrieve lists of articles from pubmed
# you need to install Biopython first.

# If you use Anaconda:
# conda install biopython

# If you use pip/venv:
# pip install biopython

# Full discussion:
# https://marcobonzanini.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/searching-pubmed-with-python/

from Bio import Entrez

def search(query):
    Entrez.email = '[email protected]'
    handle = Entrez.esearch(db='pubmed', 
                            sort='relevance', 
                            retmax='20',
                            retmode='xml', 
                            term=query)
    results = Entrez.read(handle)
    return results

def fetch_details(id_list):
    ids = ','.join(id_list)
    Entrez.email = '[email protected]'
    handle = Entrez.efetch(db='pubmed',
                           retmode='xml',
                           id=ids)
    results = Entrez.read(handle)
    return results

if __name__ == '__main__':
    results = search('fever')
    id_list = results['IdList']
    papers = fetch_details(id_list)
    for i, paper in enumerate(papers['PubmedArticle']):
        print("{}) {}".format(i+1, paper['MedlineCitation']['Article']['ArticleTitle']))

Thanks this is very helpful. Somewhat similar to @echorule, I'm having trouble obtaining the full abstract of a paper as one string. What I get looks like this:

StringElement(' ... ', attributes={'Label': 'BACKGROUND', 'NlmCategory': 'BACKGROUND'}), StringElement(' ... ', attributes={'Label': 'METHODS', 'NlmCategory': 'METHODS'}), StringElement('...' ...)

Is there a more reasonable way to go about this?

@rsgoncalves did you manage to resolve this? You can fetch abstract by using: paper['MedlineCitation']['Article']['Abstract']['AbstractText']

So your full code retrieving for author, title and abstract could look something like:

from Bio import Entrez

def search(query):
    Entrez.email = '[email protected]'
    handle = Entrez.esearch(db='pubmed',
                            sort='relevance',
                            retmax='20',
                            retmode='xml',
                            term=query)
    results = Entrez.read(handle)
    return results

def fetch_details(id_list):
    ids = ','.join(id_list)
    Entrez.email = '[email protected]'
    handle = Entrez.efetch(db='pubmed',
                           retmode='xml',
                           id=ids)
    results = Entrez.read(handle)
    return results

def get_abstract(paper):
    abstract = ''
    if 'Abstract' in paper['MedlineCitation']['Article']:
        abstract = paper['MedlineCitation']['Article']['Abstract']['AbstractText']
        if isinstance(abstract, list):
            abstract = ' '.join(abstract)
    return abstract

if __name__ == '__main__':
    results = search('fever')
    id_list = results['IdList']
    papers = fetch_details(id_list)
    for i, paper in enumerate(papers['PubmedArticle']):
        title = paper['MedlineCitation']['Article']['ArticleTitle']
        author_list = paper['MedlineCitation']['Article']['AuthorList']
        authors = ', '.join([author.get('LastName', '') for author in author_list])
        abstract = get_abstract(paper)
        print("{}) Title: {}".format(i+1, title))
        print("   Authors: {}".format(authors))
        print("   Abstract: {}".format(abstract))
        print()