La productividad científica española en relación con métodos experimentales alternativos in vivo e in vitro

Resumen

To evaluate the Spanish scientific productivity related to in vivo and in vitro experimental procedures, the number of articles of relevant scientific publications have been identified by searching the bibliographic database Medline. The areas where experimental animals and alternatives are habitually used -education, biomedical and environmental basic research and toxicity testing- have been searched from 1966 to 1998. An important increase on the Spanish scientific production have been observed on the studied areas in relation to the global international production, but reaching only 2.13% at the present. The increase on experimental studies is proportionally more important for the publications using alternative methods, but with some delay in Spain (32 in contrast to 36%). The species most used in vivo were rat, mouse and human. In vitro researchers preferred human to rat and mouse as source of material for their assays. The number of studies was parallel in vivo and in vitro, mainly on the areas of Physiology, Genetics, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Toxicology, Surgery, and Pathology. The important proportion of genetic studies is due to the design of transgenic model systems.