Alcohol and Alcoholism Advance Access originally published online on November 18, 2005
Alcohol and Alcoholism 2006 41(1):99-106; doi:10.1093/alcalc/agh238
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WORLDWIDE ALCOHOL-RELATED RESEARCH AND THE DISEASE BURDEN
1 Nutritional Sciences Research Division, School of Life Sciences, King's College London, Franklin-Wilkins Building, 150 Stamford Street, London SE1 8WA, UK and 2 Department of Information Science, City University, London EC1V 0HB, UK
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed at: Tel.: +44 (0)20 7040 0214; Fax: +44 (0)20 7040 8584; E-mail: g.lewison{at}soi.city.ac.uk
(Received 12 July 2005; first review notified 15 August 2005; in final revised form 19 September 2005; accepted 22 October 2005)
Aims: The purpose of this study was to determine the international commitment to alcohol-related research relative to its global burden of disease, which is 4% of disability adjusted life years (DALYs). Methods: The worldwide literature indexed in the Science Citation Index® and the Social Sciences Citation Index® during 19922003 was analysed using advanced bibliometric techniques. Results: Biomedical research and the global disease burden due to alcohol both increased during 19922003, whilst the number of papers from alcohol-related research remained static and declined to <0.7% of all biomedical research literature. Nearly 58% of all alcohol-related research papers were from Canada and the United States, 30% from Western Europe, and 10% from Australia, New Zealand, or Japan. However, these regions suffer only 13% of the global burden of disease due to alcohol; meanwhile, the rest of the world contributed only 8% of the total research whilst suffering from 87% of the disease burden. The estimated annual expenditure on alcohol-related research in 2001 was $730 million, or about $12 per DALY due to alcohol. Conclusions: The global commitment to alcohol-related research is only one-sixth of that warranted by the burden of disease due to alcohol. Most such research is conducted in the developed world but is still less than that appropriate to the regional burden of disease. There is a need for more interest in alcohol-related research in the developing world, particularly in Latin America and Eastern Europe in view of their high burden of disease due to alcohol.