Sex Differences Remain Under-Reported in Cardiovascular Publications

For the past two decades, there has been increased interest from medical journals and calls to action from various organizations such as the National Institutes of Health to study sex differences in cardiovascular (CV) disease. It is unknown whether this emphasis has translated to a growth in publications addressing sex differences in CV disease. We performed a bibliometric analysis of all CV publications from 2006 to 2015. The National Library of Medicine's PubMed database was searched for articles containing the phrases "cardiac," "cardiovascular" or "cardiology," in the first author affiliation field. This was followed by a subsequent search for publications containing any of the following phrases in the title and/or abstract: "woman," "women," "female," "females," "gender," or "sex." The presence of such terms defined the publication as sex-specific. Trends over time were analyzed for specified subgroups, including publication category and funding source. A total of 189,543 CV publications were identified, out of which there were 24,615 (12.99%) sex-specific publications. For the 10-year period, there were no significant changes in the relative proportion of sex-specific publications. When specific publication categories were analyzed, there were significant proportional increase of sex-specific publications in general articles category, but not for reviews, clinical trials, meta-analysis, or letters. Despite calls for greater attention, only a small fraction of publications for the past decade have reported on sex differences. There was no significant proportional growth of sex-specific publications for a recent 10-year period, except for the general research articles.