Abstract
Background: There is currently little information regarding how much the distribution of research activity in respiratory medicine reflects the interests of its clinicians and scientists, the disease burden in any country, or the availability of funding.
Methods: A total of 81 419 respiratory medicine publications identified in the Science Citation Index for the years 1996–2001 were assigned to 14 subject areas (mainly based on title words) and to 15 OECD countries. Outputs were compared with a nation's disease burdens and, for the UK, the sources of research funding were investigated.
Results and conclusions: Overall, Finland, Canada, Spain and the UK had the greatest relative commitment to respiratory medicine research expressed as a ratio of their share of world biomedical research. The largest subject areas were asthma, lung cancer, and paediatric lung disease, each with over 1400 papers published per year. Australia and Canada led in relative commitment to sleep research and Sweden and Finland led in research on asthma. Australia and the UK produced significant numbers of publications on cystic fibrosis (CF) but Finland produced few. The Netherlands has a strong output on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), France and the UK on diffuse parenchymal lung disease (DPLD), and Finland dominated occupational lung disease research but had few publications on HIV/AIDS where Spain proportionately produced most. Finland and Australia had strong outputs in paediatric lung disease research. For most subject areas the research output of a country correlated poorly with disease burden. In the UK, lung cancer research appeared unduly low in relation to the number of deaths and COPD outputs were low compared with those for asthma. However, correlations were positive for the burden of CF and pulmonary complications of HIV/AIDS which explains, for example, the low outputs in these subject areas from Finland. The strong performance in CF research in the UK is likely to reflect significant charitable funding, while sleep research, pulmonary circulatory disease, and DPLD had little stated external funding or sponsorship.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (188.5 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Abbasi K. Progress is slow in narrowing the health research divide. BMJ. 2001 Oct 20;323(7318):886–886. doi: 10.1136/bmj.323.7318.886. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Bobadilla Joseph L., Macek Milan, Jr, Fine Jason P., Farrell Philip M. Cystic fibrosis: a worldwide analysis of CFTR mutations--correlation with incidence data and application to screening. Hum Mutat. 2002 Jun;19(6):575–606. doi: 10.1002/humu.10041. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Ferriman Annabel. Where there is despair, hope. BMJ. 2002 Nov 23;325(7374):1194–1194. doi: 10.1136/bmj.325.7374.1194. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Lenfant Claude. Pro: Greater funding of cell and molecular biology has delivered what was promised to respiratory medicine. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2004 Feb 15;169(4):437–440. doi: 10.1164/rccm.2312004. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Lucotte G., Hazout S., De Braekeleer M. Complete map of cystic fibrosis mutation DF508 frequencies in Western Europe and correlation between mutation frequencies and incidence of disease. Hum Biol. 1995 Oct;67(5):797–803. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- O'Neale Roach J. Research does not reflect global disease burden. BMJ. 2000 May 6;320(7244):1228–1228. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Partridge M. R. The profile of respiratory conditions: why government action is necessary. Thorax. 2001 Oct;56(10):744–745. doi: 10.1136/thorax.56.10.744. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Ramsay S. No closure in sight for the 10/90 health-research gap. Lancet. 2001 Oct 20;358(9290):1348–1348. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(01)06465-0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Ramsay S. UK inquiry highlights urgent need for "research governance". Lancet. 2000 May 13;355(9216):1706–1706. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(05)73119-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Terán-Santos J., Jiménez-Gómez A., Cordero-Guevara J. The association between sleep apnea and the risk of traffic accidents. Cooperative Group Burgos-Santander. N Engl J Med. 1999 Mar 18;340(11):847–851. doi: 10.1056/NEJM199903183401104. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Worldwide variations in the prevalence of asthma symptoms: the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) Eur Respir J. 1998 Aug;12(2):315–335. doi: 10.1183/09031936.98.12020315. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Young Terry, Peppard Paul E., Gottlieb Daniel J. Epidemiology of obstructive sleep apnea: a population health perspective. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2002 May 1;165(9):1217–1239. doi: 10.1164/rccm.2109080. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]