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Abstract Introduction: Chronic kidney disease is usually asymptomatic, and its diagnosis depends on laboratory tests, with emphasis on serum creatinine and proteinuria. Objective: To assess knowledge on the role of serum creatinine as a biomarker of kidney function in a sample of the Brazilian population. Method: Cross-sectional observational study conducted in São Paulo (SP, Brazil), in which a random adult population was interviewed. Results: A total of 1138 subjects were interviewed, with a median age of 36 years old (27–52); 55.1% were female. Regarding the “creatinine” biomarker, 40.6% stated they had never performed such a test. When asked about their knowledge on the usefulness of this exam, only 19.6% knew its function. The other responses were “I don’t know” (71.6%), evaluating heart function (0.9%) and liver function (7.8%). Of those who reported they had already taken a creatinine test, only 29.4% correctly identified the role of creatinine. When dividing the groups into “knows” and “does not know” the function of creatinine, a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) was observed regarding level of education, female sex, being a healthcare student/worker, having ever measured creatinine, knowing someone with kidney disease and older age. In the multivariate analysis, the main variable related to knowing the creatinine role was having previously taken the test (OR 5.16; 95% CI 3.16–8.43, p < 0.001). Conclusion: There is a significant lack of knowledge about creatinine and its use in checkups. The results indicate that greater efforts are needed from healthcare professionals to raise awareness on the role of serum creatinine.

The relationship between research topics and academic prestige of journals is of relevance to assess venues for current research as well as trending areas of new research. This is of special relevance for those developing a research agenda or with defined productivity outcome expectations. This manuscript extracts prevalent topics using titles and abstracts from more than 10,000 manuscripts, constituting all published research in International Scientific Indexing (ISI) journals within the oral health specialties of oral surgery, orthodontics, and periodontics during 2018. Journals are clustered across four quartile categories according to their impact factors. The novelty of our work includes (a) an examination of a neglected unit of analysis (bigram) in oral health sciences which is of higher relevance than single-word topic definitions and (b) the use of an efficient Bayesian hierarchical approach to extract and rank topics across quartiles with information borrowing. Some topics persisted across quartile groups, while others show higher prevalence in specific quartiles, indicating that topics may find some journal quartiles a more appropriate venue for publication. All quartile groups show a prevalence of empirical research. The approach described in this manuscript offers the possibility to adjust/generate research agendas based on research topic prevalence and dynamics. This methodology is relevant for researchers looking to define their research agendas with potential outcomes aligned with the expectations of quantity and quartile set by their home institutions. It also serves researchers to assess most likely quartiles for publication of their work.

INTRODUCTION:Research productivity has been linked to a country's intellectual and economic wealth. Further analysis is needed to assess the association between the distribution of research across disciplines and the economic status of countries. METHODS:By using 55 years of data, spanning 1962 to 2017, of Elsevier publications across a large set of research disciplines and countries globally, this manuscript explores the relationship and evolution of relative research productivity across different disciplines through a network analysis. It also explores the associations of those with economic productivity categories, as measured by the World Bank economic classification. Additional analysis of discipline similarities is possible by exploring the cross-country evolution of those disciplines. RESULTS:Results show similarities in the relative importance of research disciplines among most high-income countries, with larger idiosyncrasies appearing among the remaining countries. This group of high-income countries shows similarities in the dynamics of the relative distribution of research productivity over time, forming a stable research productivity cluster. Lower income countries form smaller, more independent and evolving clusters, and differ significantly from each other and from higher income countries in the relative importance of their research emphases. Country-based similarities in research productivity profiles also appear to be influenced by geographical proximity. CONCLUSIONS:This new form of analyses of research productivity, and its relation to economic status, reveals novel insights to the dynamics of the economic and research structure of countries. This allows for a deeper understanding of the role a country's research structure may play in shaping its economy, and also identification of benchmark resource allocations across disciplines for developing countries.

Introduction: Chronic kidney disease is usually asymptomatic, and its diagnosis depends on laboratory tests, with emphasis on serum creatinine and proteinuria., Objective: To assess knowledge on the role of serum creatinine as a biomarker of kidney function in a sample of the Brazilian population., Method: Cross-sectional observational study conducted in São Paulo (SP, Brazil), in which a random adult population was interviewed., Results: A total of 1138 subjects were interviewed, with a median age of 36 years old (27-52); 55.1% were female. Regarding the "creatinine" biomarker, 40.6% stated they had never performed such a test. When asked about their knowledge on the usefulness of this exam, only 19.6% knew its function. The other responses were "I don't know" (71.6%), evaluating heart function (0.9%) and liver function (7.8%). Of those who reported they had already taken a creatinine test, only 29.4% correctly identified the role of creatinine. When dividing the groups into "knows" and "does not know" the function of creatinine, a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) was observed regarding level of education, female sex, being a healthcare student/worker, having ever measured creatinine, knowing someone with kidney disease and older age. In the multivariate analysis, the main variable related to knowing the creatinine role was having previously taken the test (OR 5.16; 95% CI 3.16-8.43, p < 0.001)., Conclusion: There is a significant lack of knowledge about creatinine and its use in checkups. The results indicate that greater efforts are needed from healthcare professionals to raise awareness on the role of serum creatinine.