Spiritualised medicine? A bibliometric study of complementary and alternative medicine

Recent research has shown that complementary and alternative therapies (CAM) are increasingly popular in the western world. As a consequence, CAM is becoming more integrated into conventional medical practices. However, this could be seen as a paradox since most CAM relies on spiritual and religious assumptions, sometimes at odds with western scientific traditions. The purpose of this paper is to study the development of research concerned with CAM. To define and retrieve publications on complementary and alternative therapies we use MEDLINE Medical Subject Heading (MeSH). In the retrieval process we use all entries under category complementary therapies, except traditional medicine since this does not denote a specific therapeutic tradition. In the article we analyse general patterns concerning the development of research activity in different CAM traditions. In the article we conclude that the publication activity in CAM increases rapidly, and that the changing growth rate of CAM articles is not due to a general expansion of Medline. We also find that the character of CAM articles has changed, especially at the beginning of the 1990(th), towards more clinical oriented research.