Monitoring the number of articles published in scientific literature over time is an indicator of the dynamism of research.

Using the international medical literature database “PubMed” with the key words “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis”, the following representation was obtained:

13 scientific articles were published in 1960; the benchmark of 100 articles published/year was only reached at the beginning of the 1980s.

Since 1990 the pace of publications about ALS research is increasing:  there was an annual growth of 34% in the number of publications during the 1990s and 45% during the 2000s.

In 2010 more than 1,000 articles about ALS research were published around the world.

The increasing numbers of research results published and communicated throughout the scientific community reveals that everyday we learn a little more about the mechanisms of the disease and that new treatment approaches are regularly explored.

This representation also revealed that the research remains a work in progress and that it is necessary to support it for the long term.

We would like to thank Dr Pierre-François Pradat, neurologist at the Pitié Salpétrière Hospital in Paris for his help carrying out this analysis.