Publication trends of vegetarian nutrition articles in biomedical literature, 1966-1995

We documented publication trends of vegetarian nutrition articles in biomed ical literature between 1966 and 1995 using the National Institutes of Heal th MEDLINE bibliographic database. The publication rate of vegetarian artic les increased steadily during the 3 decades, from an average of <10/y in th e late 1960s to 76/y in the early 1990s. After adjusting for the total numb er of articles indexed in MEDLINE annually, we found that publication of ve getarian nutrition articles increased dramatically, by I 4-fold, during the 1970s and reached an oscillating plateau during the 1980s. In the early 19 90s, the proportion of vegetarian nutrition articles 8 articles per 1000 ve getarian nutrition articles and approximate to 20 per 100 000 articles inde xed by MEDLINE. Non-nutrition journals have progressively published a large r share of all vegetarian articles in the biomedical literature during the period studied. The nature and study design of published vegetarian researc h has changed over the years as well. The proportion of original research a nd review articles increased whereas case series and letters to the editor decreased. Reports of epidemiologic studies of vegetarians with longitudina l designs have superseded cross-sectional designs in number and proportion. In 40% of all publications, preventive and therapeutic applications of veg etarian diets constituted the major themes of vegetarian articles in the de cade of 1986-1995. However, 20 y earlier the main focus was on the nutritio nal adequacy of vegetarian diets. The progressive change in the themes of v egetarian nutrition publications is interpreted as a shift in the role of v egetarian diets in human nutrition.