[Ecology: The blind spot in pathology research]

The 2015 Paris Agreement has been the first restrictive agreement in the fight against climate change. The newer generations of pathologists, who feel more anxiety due to environmental problems than their predecessors, are asked to publish research works while they are harder and harder to and in a context of demographical tensions. We wanted to measure the rise of ecology research in pathology since the Paris Agreement.

Over a ten years study period (2013-2022), we have identified via PubMed the number of articles in which forty-three terms taken from the sustainable development vocabulary appeared in ten renowned international pathology journals, selected for their SJR index from ScimagoJr and their impact factor, plus the Annales de pathologie, and compared their means of incidence between the 2013-2015 (m₁) and 2016-2022 (m₂) periods. The same process has been applied for "artificial intelligence", "deep learning" and "digital pathology".

A total of 1336 articles have been identified. Only "digital pathology" (fromm₁=8,33 to m₂=23,29; p=0,010) and "deep learning" (fromm₁=0 to m₂=10,14; p=0,034) saw their incidence rise significantly. A significant decrease has been observed with "biological" (fromm₁=70,00 to m₂=56,86; p=0,020).

Pathology reacts to trends but research in ecology has remained in the blind spot since 2015. However there seems to be an awakening as editorials, articles and communications in congress have blossomed the last two years.