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For some keywords, adding an asterisk is not increasing as expected but reducing the number of matches in PubMed searches.

I provide here the two issues I have found to date:

The search just for parkinson, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=parkinson, yields 180,856 results. However, the search for parkinson* (aiming to include terms such as parkinsonian or parkinsonism in the results), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=parkinson*, yields only 179,682 results (the same if you search for parkinso*).

Similarly, the search for covid-19, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=covid-19, yields 443,661 results, while covid*, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=covid*, provides only 429,527 results.

Therefore, you miss some matches if you add an asterisk (or if you change the end of the word by an asterisk in the first example). What is happening here?

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    $\begingroup$ This is probably something that only the NCBI helpdesk can answer, I'm afraid. $\endgroup$
    – terdon ♦
    Commented Aug 30 at 14:17

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