Tracking the Growth of Drug Therapy Literature Using PubMed

The biomedical literature has exploded over the past 50 years. The purpose of this study was to track the growth of drug therapy literature using the online provider PubMed. We utilized the first 20 Disease [C] MeSH listed on the 2005 MeSH tree structures for our study. Drug therapy literature was searched using the disease MeSH with the ending/drug therapy or/chemically induced. Publication numbers were compiled each year from 1966 to 2003. Disease articles increased by 612% from 1966 to 2003. Drug therapy articles increased by 1,116% during the same period. As a percentage of all disease articles, drug therapy publications increased from 11% to 18% over this time period. Drug therapy review articles grew by 10,521% over the time period; drug therapy randomized clinical trials increased by 5,228%. Geriatric drug therapy articles increased at a greater rate than pediatric literature (1,210% vs. 637%). Infectious disease (14%), oncology (14%), immunologic diseases (10%), cardiovascular disease (9%), and neurologic/psychiatric diseases (8%) constitute the highest percentages of all drug therapy articles. Drug therapy literature is growing at a faster rate than the disease literature on PubMed. Drug therapy review articles alone are approaching 10,000 articles/year and are the fastest growing subsection of the drug therapy literature on PubMed.