Computer-based information system on poisonous plants for veterinary practitioners

Animals poisoned by plants are the subject of an increasing number of inqui ries made to poison control centres. The most frequent questions are concer ned with the identification of potentially toxic species and the choice of adequate therapeutic strategies. To meet this growing demand for informatio n, we generated a database on poisonous plants to be used by veterinary pra ctitioners. Relevant data were selected from the scientific literature and organised according to the requirements of a structured database. As a resu lt, we now introduce a user-friendly decision support system that is equipp ed with several search functions for fast and efficient retrieval of data. The information provided for each plant includes the degree of toxicity, ma jor toxic constituents, their mechanism of action, pathological findings, c linical symptoms with brief case reports, therapeutic guidelines and refere nces. In addition, each species is accompanied by a botanical description w ith photographic illustrations. This information tool on poisonous plants i s available via the internet (http://www.vetpharm.unizh.ch) or compact disc , and can be accessed on Macintosh, Windows or UNIX using a browser that su pports HTML 3.