Gender- and sex-specific research patterns in different cardiovascular diseases: a comparison between myocardial infarction and stroke

Background: Cardiovascular diseases represent the leading cause of mortality and disability worldwide. Variations in gender-/sex-specific research patterns between different cardiovascular endpoints are unclear. We compared frequency, content and funding scheme of published gender/sex-specific cardiovascular research between stroke and myocardial infarction (MI). Methods: Systematic literature search in Pubmed was performed for gender/sex-specific articles in stroke and MI published 1978–2008. A specifically designed text-mining programme including gender-/sex-specific search terms was used. Abstracts were scree…