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Prostate Cancer

Methodology

According to the National Cancer Institute, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. In the United Kingdom, over 30,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed each year, says the organization Cancer Research UK. This month, Special Topics examines prostate cancer research over the past decade as well as over the past two years.

The papers for both time periods cover a similar range of topics from diagnostic tools to treatments to gene studies. The use of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) as a diagnostic and staging tool is prevalent across all years of the analysis.

Other studies in the 10-year data set include: the role of the androgen receptor gene, studies examining mutations in the tumor suppressor gene PTEN, the role of tyrosine kinase receptors, DNA screening, and a variety of treatments, including radiation therapy, radical prostatectomy, goserlin, Taxol (paclitaxel), and mitoxantrone plus prednisone.

The two-year data set contains more papers on different treatment studies compared with the 10-year data set. Treatments being studied and cited in the past two years include: docetaxel plus prednisone vs. prednisone alone, docetaxel plus estramustine vs. mitoxantrone plus prednisone, atrasentran, and calcitrol plus docetaxel. There is also a study looking at the use of zoledronic acid for prevention of bone loss during androgen-deprivation therapy. Other notable studies include a report from the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial on the use of finasteride as a preventative agent, and the development of high-resolution MRI with magnetic nanoparticles for noninvasive detection of prostate cancer.

Methodology

To construct this database, papers were extracted based on title-supplied keywords for Prostate Cancer. The keywords used were as follows: 

prostate cancer

The baseline time span for this database is 1995-2005 (fifth bimonthly). The resulting database contained 10,962 (10 years) and  4,283 (2 years) papers; 26,695 authors; 82 countries; 841 journals; and 4,663 institutions. Read the methodology used to create this special topic.

Rankings

Once the database was in place, it was used to generate the lists of top 20 papers (two- and ten-year periods), authors, journals, institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1995-2006 (fifth bimonthly, a 10-year plus 10-month period).

The top 20 papers are ranked according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution, and country are listed in three ways: according to total cites, total papers, and total cites/paper. The paper thresholds and corresponding percentages used to determine scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to total cites/paper, and total papers respectively are as follows:

Entity: Scientists Institutions Countries Journals
Thresholds: 56 109 8 21
Percentage: 1% 5% 50% 10%

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