The following new article has just been published in Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases

Letter to the Editor

Focusing on rare diseases in China: are we there yet?

Yang L, Su C, Lee A, Bai H

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases 2015, 10 :142 (2 November 2015)

Abstract | Full Text | PDF

Focusing on rare diseases in China: are we there yet?

Li Yang¹^*, Chang Su², Ashley M. Lee³ and Harrison X. Bai⁴

*Corresponding author: Li Yang yangli762@gmail.com

Author Affiliations

¹Department of Neurology, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, No. 139 Middle Renmin Road, Changsha 410011, Hunan, PR China

²Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, 210S. 33rd street, Suite 240 Skirkanich Hall, Philadelphia 19104, PA, USA

³Mallinckrodt Institude of Radiology, Washingto University in Saint Louis, 510 S Kingshighway Blvd, St. Louis 63110, MO, USA

⁴Department of Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia 19104, PA, USA

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Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases 2015, 10:142 doi:10.1186/s13023-015-0361-3

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:http://www.ojrd.com/content/10/1/142

Received:	12 October 2015
Accepted:	21 October 2015
Published:	2 November 2015

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Abstract

The Chinese researchers have made significant progress in studying rare diseases in the recent years. From 2000 to 2014, 269 out of 1892 clinically relevant original research papers published on high impact journals by Chinese institutions, and 2678 out of 6040 clinical trials conducted by Chinese institutions and registered at ClinicalTrial.gov are focused on rare diseases. The number of research papers and of clinical trials has shown a steady trend of increase. Creating public databases for rare disease will escalate progress in rare disease and enable multicenter studies.