Dr. Javier Santos, digestive system specialist at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, and Principal Researcher of the Physiology and Digestive Pathophysiology group at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), was the most cited author in the academic journal Gastroenterology in 2021. The data have been extracted from Exaly, a non-profit project that seeks to create a scientific search engine that is free, reliable, and non-commercial, and they have been rectified by other specialized portals.

Of the over 80 scientific articles that Dr. Javier Santos has written to this date, the most popular in 2021 was the first global study on the prevalence of functional gastrointestinal disorders published in Gastroenterology itself. In fact, this article was the most cited publication in this journal last year and has the classification of "hot paper" on the Web of Science, which means that it is among the 0.1% best papers in Clinical Medicine.

The study was the result of a massive international collaboration that collected the incidence data of functional gastrointestinal disorders in 33 countries using a standardized methodology. All previous research on this group of intestinal pathologies, which includes irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), functional constipation, diarrhea or bloating, and other unspecified gastrointestinal disorders, had yielded very different prevalences. For example, the data for the occurrence of IBS ranged from 1.1% to 45% depending on the study. This made it impossible to draw conclusions about the real impact of these diseases on society.

The research, signed by 48 scientists, collected data from 73,073 participants in 33 different countries and concluded that the overall prevalence is slightly above 40%. An incidence that demonstrates the importance of further study of these gastrointestinal disorders. The need for this work is demonstrated by its great popularity; in fact, the 15 most cited authors in the journal Gastroenterology in 2021 are authors of this work.