RESEARCH ACTIVITIES ON EMERGING AND REEMERGING DISEASES

Abstract

This paper showed the trend in the number of paper published on emerging and reemerging diseases by using the list of the Medline, which is one of the most valuable databases in the clinical and biological medicine. The number of research papers published on the emerging and reemerging infections in that database decreased in 1997, in comparison with those between 1994 and 1996, in spite of the fact that the total number of the paper pub- lished has been increasing year by year. There is also a report showing that the number of the published papers of noticeable infectious diseases such as AIDS, Hepatitis B, Gonorrhea, Pertussis and Tuberculosis declined by 15% or more in the USA from 1993 to 1995. It also became clear that USA is the highest in rank for the number of pa- pers published and it was well ahead of the other countries. However, as for Vibrio cholerae O139, Human T- lymphtropic Virus type 1 and Plague, a lot of papers have been published by responding countries like India, Japan and Russia, respectively. This result might be showing that research activity of each country for each disease re- lates to the extent of their concern over each disease.