To ensure that NPIS staff are equipped to answer enquiries on all aspects of human toxicology and that TOXBASE is kept up-to-date, access to current scientific literature is essential. With the assistance of the other NPIS Units, NPIS (Birmingham Unit) produces Current Awareness in Clinical Toxicology each month. Each issue lists some 300 citations, with 10-12 key papers being highlighted each month because of their importance to clinical management. In the digital version, some 80% of the citations have abstracts. Citations are selected using searches specially developed for the purpose run against Medline and Embase.

Current Awareness is edited by Sarah Cage and Allister Vale and is distributed electronically or in hard copy. It has been published monthly since 1997. Although Current Awareness is published primarily as a service for the UK NPIS, it is also circulated by the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, the European Association of Poisons Centres and Clinical Toxicology and the Asia Pacific Association of Medical Toxicology to their members worldwide.

The January 2010 issue of Current Awareness in Clinical Toxicology can be downloaded as a .pdf file:

   UK NPIS version (299 KB)
   AACT version (255 KB)
   EAPCCT version (299 KB)
   APAMT version (299 KB)

A database version of the current issue of Current Awareness in Clinical Toxicology can also be downloaded by clicking here. This is available as a self-extracting file producing a Reference Manager database, which needs the Reference Manager program to read and search the database, or as a text file in RIS format.

Cumulative Reference Manager databases of citations included in Current Awareness in Clinical Toxicology can also be downloaded from the archive.