A Medical Paper Called a 37-Year-Old Study Recent, and Nearly 1 in 5 Recent Citations Were at Least a Decade Old

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Nearly one in five of those recent references, 177 in all, pointed to work that was at least a decade old. The analysis, published in December 2025 in The BMJ’s Christmas issue, suggests the word often signals importance or novelty more than a date on the calendar.

For anyone who reads health news, the finding matters. Press releases and news stories often lean on phrases like “recent research shows,” and that wording frequently traces back to the journal articles themselves.

The authors, Alejandro Díez-Vidal and José R. Arribas, work in the department of internal medicine at La Paz University Hospital and its research institute, IdiPAZ, in Madrid. Arribas is also affiliated with Spain’s national infectious disease research network, CIBERINFEC, and the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Their paper ran in the journal’s annual Christmas issue, which mixes humor with real research. According to the BMJ Group’s summary of the study, it was externally peer-reviewed and is observational, meaning it describes patterns without testing why authors choose their words.

The team searched PubMed for 20 predefined expressions, such as recent study, recent discovery, and recent publication, that were directly tied to a citation. For each of the 1,000 articles, they analyzed only the first valid instance and calculated the citation lag, the gap in years between the citing paper and the work it called recent.

The median lag was four years, and the mean was about 5.5 years. The most common lag was just one year, found in 159 papers, which suggests many authors do use the word sensibly.

The long tail is what stands out. Twenty-six articles had a lag of 20 years or more, and four cited references at least 30 years old as recent.

The meaning of recent shifted sharply by specialty. In critical care, infectious diseases, genetics, immunology and radiology, the median lag was about two years.

In nephrology, veterinary medicine and dentistry, it ranged from 8.5 to 14 years. In other words, a recent finding cited in a kidney or dental paper could easily be around a decade old, while the same word in an infectious disease paper usually pointed to something from the past couple of years.

The study did not test why those differences exist. Fast-moving fields may simply produce new evidence more quickly, while others may rely on older foundational trials for longer. That explanation is plausible, but the authors measured the age of citations, not the reasons behind it.

The median lag held steady at four years across world regions and improved over time. Articles published between 2020 and 2025 had a median lag of 2.5 years, and journals with impact factors of 12 or higher had a shorter median lag of three years.

The specific phrasing offered clues. References described as a recent approach, recent discovery or recent study tended to be older. Recent study alone had a median lag of 5.5 years.

By contrast, recent publication and recent article were attached to much fresher citations, which the authors described as showing reassuringly tight timelines. Words that point to the act of publishing appear to stay closer to the calendar than words that describe an idea or a finding.

The authors’ advice was simple. They wrote that readers and reviewers should take recent claims “with a grain of chronological salt.”

An older citation is not automatically a problem. A landmark trial from 20 years ago may still be the best evidence available. The authors acknowledged that they did not assess the quality or relevance of the cited work, only its age, and that they examined only one expression per article.

The concern is the accuracy of the description. Calling a decades-old study recent can imply that the evidence reflects current methods, populations, or treatments when it may not.

The findings fit with earlier research on how medical literature ages. A 2023 study in BMJ Open examined 17,895 references in 726 articles from eight high-impact medical and science journals, including The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. It sampled the first issue of each journal each year from 1996 to 2020 and found a mean citation lag of 7.5 years. More than 70% of references had been published within the previous decade, and roughly 15% to 20% were 10 to 19 years old.

For readers, the practical step is to check the publication date of the original study whenever a story or press release cites recent research. MedlinePlus, from the National Library of Medicine, advises readers to check whether health information is up to date, and the NIH’s Know the Science resources explain how to judge health news stories. Anyone weighing a health decision based on new evidence can ask a clinician whether older findings still apply.

What did the study on recent citations find?

Among 1,000 biomedical papers, references described as recent ranged from zero to 37 years old, with a median age of four years. About 17.7% were at least 10 years old.

Which specialties used the oldest recent citations?

Nephrology, veterinary medicine, and dentistry had median lags of 8.5 to 14 years, compared with about two years in fields such as critical care and infectious diseases.

Which phrases were linked to older references?

Recent approach, recent discovery, and recent study were tied to older references, while recent publication and recent article were tied to newer ones.

Not necessarily. Older studies can remain the best evidence. The concern is labeling them as recent, which can mislead readers about how current the evidence is.

How can readers check whether research is truly recent?

Look for the original study’s publication date, which is often linked in news coverage, rather than relying on the word recent.