Identifying and collecting relevant literature related to the oral toxicity of furan and its methyl analogues, 2‐methylfuran and 3‐methylfuran

An extensive literature search to identify and collect all relevant literature on the oral toxicity of furan and its methyl analogues, 2-methylfuran and 3-methylfuran was performed in the two databases PubMed and Web of Science for four Areas. The literature search resulted for Area 1 (toxicokinetics) in 1,674 hits from PubMed and 2,318 hits from Web of Science; for Area 2 (oral toxicity in experimental animals) in 2,329 hits from PubMed and 3,914 hits from Web of Science; for Area 3 (in vitro and in vivo genotoxicity and mode of action) in 1,100 hits from PubMed and 2,290 hits from Web of Science; and for Area 4 (observations in humans) in 639 hits from PubMed and 1,073 from Web of Science. After removal of the duplicates, the total number of hits for Area 1 was 3,184, for Area 2 was 4,883, for Area 3 was 2,588, and for Area 4 was 1,295. The evaluation of all retrieved references for relevance by screening the title and abstract (if available) and applying eligibility criteria (inclusion/exclusion) resulted in a total number of relevant references for Area 1 of 33, for Area 2 of 44, for Area 3 of 75 (including two relevant references located in the Area 2 literature search), and for Area 4 of 5. © European Food Safety Authority, 2017