Hanscheid T, Mahomed Sara M, Rebelo Maria, Henriques Susana Oliveira, Grobusch Martin P
Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.
Center of Tropical Medicine and Travel Medicine, Department of Infectious Diseases, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Location AMC, Amsterdam Infection & Immunity, Amsterdam Public Health, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
New Microbes New Infect. 2024 Nov 30;62:101544. doi: 10.1016/j.nmni.2024.101544. eCollection 2024 Dec.
Accurate scientific terminology is crucial in health sciences to avoid misinterpretations. The use of 'artemisinin resistance' to describe delayed parasite clearance may be inaccurately equated with full resistance, as is typically the case when 'resistance' is used with other pathogens, leading to potential confusion. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced 'partial artemisinin resistance' to more accurately reflect the delayed parasite clearance observed with artemisinin-based therapies.
We analyzed whether articles in PubMed accurately convey the concept of 'partial artemisinin resistance' using GPT-4 to generate related search terms. AntConc was employed for corpus analysis of retrieved articles to examine terminology in titles and abstracts. A manual review evaluated the use of the WHO concept of 'partial artemisinin resistance' in the full text of a subset of high-impact articles.
Out of 4041 articles retrieved, only 7 % (n = 281) used 'partial' or 'delayed' in titles or abstracts. Even after 2018, when WHO introduced the term 'partial artemisinin resistance', only 10 % of articles included this. Manual analysis of 161 full-text articles revealed that 94 % did not use 'partial artemisinin resistance', and 59 % did not explain the concept of delayed parasite clearance.
The delayed introduction of the term 'partial artemisinin resistance' may have contributed to continued use of the scientifically questionable term 'artemisinin resistance'. This term may be misunderstood as full resistance, as is common with antibiotic resistance. Accurate terminology is essential for clear scientific communication, and precise terms should be established and consistently used from the outset by scientists and clinicians.
准确的科学术语在健康科学领域至关重要，可避免误解。用“青蒿素抗性”来描述寄生虫清除延迟可能会被不准确地等同于完全抗性，这与“抗性”用于其他病原体时的典型情况相同，从而导致潜在的混淆。2018年，世界卫生组织（WHO）引入了“部分青蒿素抗性”，以更准确地反映基于青蒿素疗法所观察到的寄生虫清除延迟情况。
我们使用GPT-4生成相关搜索词，分析了PubMed上的文章是否准确传达了“部分青蒿素抗性”这一概念。利用AntConc对检索到的文章进行语料库分析，以检查标题和摘要中的术语。人工评审评估了高影响力文章子集中的全文对WHO“部分青蒿素抗性”概念的使用情况。
在检索到的4041篇文章中，只有7%（n = 281）在标题或摘要中使用了“部分”或“延迟”。即使在2018年WHO引入“部分青蒿素抗性”一词之后，也只有10%的文章提及了这一概念。对161篇全文文章的人工分析显示，94%的文章未使用“部分青蒿素抗性”，59%的文章未解释寄生虫清除延迟的概念。
“部分青蒿素抗性”一词引入较晚，可能导致了科学上有问题的术语“青蒿素抗性”的持续使用。这个术语可能会被误解为完全抗性，就像抗生素抗性那样常见。准确的术语对于清晰的科学交流至关重要，科学家和临床医生应从一开始就建立并始终使用精确的术语。
