BackgroundAnalysis of biomedical research and publications in a country or group of countries is used to monitor research progress and trends. This study aims to assess the performance of biomedical research in the Arab world during 2001–2005 and to compare it with other Middle Eastern non-Arab countries.MethodsPubMed and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-expanded) were searched systematically for the original biomedical research publications and their citation frequencies of 16 Arab nations and three non-Arab Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Israel and Turkey), all of which are classified as middle or high income countries.ResultsThe 16 Arab countries together have 5775 and 14,374 original research articles listed by PubMed and SCI-expanded, respectively, significantly less (p < 0.001) than the other three Middle Eastern countries (25,643 and 49,110). The Arab countries also scored less when the data were normalized to population, gross domestic product (GDP), and GDP/capita. The publications from the Arab countries also have a significantly lower (p < 0.001) citation frequency.ConclusionThe Arab world is producing fewer biomedical publications of lower quality than other Middle Eastern countries. Studies are needed to clarify the causes and to propose strategies to improve the biomedical research status in Arab countries.

The CKD-EPI equation, based on creatinine, age, sex and race, has been validated and is more accurate than the MDRD study equation. The addition of weight, diabetes and transplant does not significantly improve equation performance.

Al-Madinah city has the highest reported incidence of childhood T1DM in the Middle East and North Africa region. Further studies to identify the reasons for this high incidence are needed.

The occurrence of an increased amount of IgM in urine at presentation is a strong marker of poor prognosis for patients with ANCA-associated renal vasculitis.

The newly developed Lund-Malmö equations for GFR estimation performed better than the MDRD(IDMS) and Mayo Clinic equations in a Swedish Caucasian sample. Inclusion of an LBM term improved performance markedly in certain subgroups.