Over the past decade, research in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has developed rapidly worldwide. The present study was designed to study the characteristics of publications in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology journals between 1999 and 2008 from the six top-ranking countries - the United States (USA), Japan, Germany, United Kingdom (UK), China and France. We also examined the research output from three different regions - Mainland China (ML), Hong Kong (HK) and Taiwan (TW). The USA contributed 34.1% of the world's total output and ranked first, but its percentage of research articles in this field went down. In total, 26,867 articles were published in journals with an impact factor (IF) < 10.000, and 46.5% of these were from the USA. China contributed 4.2% of the total in 268 journals, 0.5% of which were journals with the top 10 IF. Our analysis describes the output from each country and region, and reveals the positive trend in China during the period of 1999-2008. In contrast to other countries, our results suggest that China is behind in conducting high-quality research. Clin Chem Lab Med 2009;47:1211-6.