In the last decade, there has been a growth of research in the field of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Latin America. Recently, the Brazilian Ministry of Health created a working group to develop health policy strategies to deal with these disorders, but the real Brazilian research capacity is still unknown.
Objectives:
The present study is a systematic literature review aiming to identify all scientific production covering publications of Brazilian authors about ASD in the period 2002 to 2007.
Methods:
This literature review includes the following scientific databases: (1) the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health (PUBMED); (2) Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) and (3) Literature Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences (LILACS). They are considered the most important Brazilian health databases.
Results:
A total of 53 papers about ASD in the period 2002 to 2007 were identified. The majority of articles were produced by authors from the Southeast Brazil and from public universities. The main research topics were: communication and familial relationship, followed by the phenotype and endophenotype. Most of the articles were based on small samples sizes and epidemiological studies were extremely rare. Over 40% of papers were published in journals with some level of impact factor that varied between 0.441 and 3.211. In addition, there were identified 117 dissertations/theses about ASD; 82.9% were master thesis.
Conclusions:
This literature review shows that Brazilian researchers are interested in the ASD theme and that there is a potential for the future in Brazilian research community. However, a big piece of the Brazilian scientific production is concentrated in dissertation/thesis and based on small samples. Additionally, the minority of papers was published in journals with high impact factor and there are important lacks in certain areas.
Thus, these results suggest the need for epidemiological studies with larger sample sizes, which would contribute to better local evidence in the public health perspective.