Following last year’s precedent, the American Journal of Medicine selects one or more articles published each year to be designated as examples of excellence in publishing for that year. The designation is determined by documented interest in the respective articles based on Internet activity and downloading, citations in the literature, and editorial opinion. In 2015, there were two first-line excellence articles and two honorable mentions.
The two first-line articles are “Persistent Insomnia Is Associated with Mortality Risk,” by Parthasarathy et al, and “Trends and Burden of Firearm-Related Hospitalizations in the United States across 2001-2011,” by Agarwal et al. The first article documented that the common sleep disorder, insomnia, is associated with increased total and cardiovascular mortality as well as increased markers of inflammation. Since 10% of Americans have one or another form of sleep disorder, this article contributes to recognition of this common problem and its inclusion in the category of coronary heart disease risk factors. The second article pointed out that firearm-related hospitalizations are associated with an 8% chance of dying in the US as well as prolonged hospital admissions. Also of interest in this latter article is the fact that firearm-related hospitalizations increased at times of economic distress. This should come as no surprise: Society distress leads to individual distress.
The two honorable mention excellence articles involved continuing discrepancies between male and female salaries in academic medicine and the extraordinary difference in the cost of scorpion anti-venom in the US compared with Mexico. In “Gender Differences in Salary of Internal Medicine Residency Directors: A National Survey,” Willett et al documented that male program directors in internal medicine were paid substantially more than female directors, thus focusing attention on an inequality that should be rectified in the very near future. Boyer, in “On 1000-fold Pharmaceutical Price Markups and Why Drugs Cost More in the United States than in Mexico,” discussed the remarkable 1000-fold difference in the cost of scorpion anti-venom in the US compared with the same product in Mexico. High-cost pharmaceutical products have been a topic of considerable debate recently, and this article will certainly further discussions concerning various innovative approaches to reducing drug costs.
The editors and Elsevier congratulate the authors on their outstanding work. We hope they, and all our contributors, will continue to send us manuscripts that are as excellent as this year’s winners.
To read this article in its entirety please visit our website.
-Joseph S. Alpert, MD (Editor in Chief, The American Journal of Medicine)
This article originally appeared in the April 2016 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.
Read the Research: Here are the winning articles…
Persistent Insomnia is Associated with Mortality Risk
Trends and Burden of Firearm-related Hospitalizations in the United States Across 2001-2011
Gender Differences in Salary of Internal Medicine Residency Directors: A National Survey
