Benchmarking Stargardt Disease
What does analysis of the last five years of the literature on Stargardt Disease tell us about the priorities of the field and the major contributors to it?
Stargardt Disease an inherited form of juvenile macular degeneration that involves progressive vision loss that is currently untreatable. A number of strongly predisposing genes have been identified, and considerable basic and clinical research is currently ongoing into the disease, characterizing not only the defective genes, their mutations and dysfunction, but also potential therapeutic interventions, including stem cell and gene therapies.
To provide insight into the past and predictions for the future of the field, a series of metrics were applied to the last five years of the published literature. We asked:
What are the major topics for the field?
Which publications have the greatest impact?
How is the knowledge available online?
Who are the most prolific authors?
PubMed was searched for: Stargardt* AND (macular* OR degenerat*), with results limited to the last five years, in humans (for a clinical focus).
Most frequent topics on PubMed
Publications per year
Fee or free?
Categorization of articles
Articles are categorized according to PubMed criteria.
Clinical study represents a clinical evaluation of a drug, device or technique that was not a clinical trial.
Journal Impact Factors for 2013
Top 12 journals (number of publications)
Articles by geographic location
Most prolific authors (Top 15)
I spent seven years as a medical writer, writing primary and review manuscripts, congress presentations and marketing materials for numerous – and mostly German – pharmaceutical companies. Prior to my adventures in medical communications, I was a Wellcome Trust PhD student at the University of Edinburgh.
