Real-time biomedical research pulse — 7d/30d/90d publication volumes from PubMed with year-over-year change for any topic.
What it does
The `/api/v1/pulse` endpoint from pubmed.sekgen.xyz returns recent publication activity for any biomedical or scientific search query across three time windows: 7 days, 30 days, and 90 days. Each window includes the current count, the year-ago count, and the percentage change, giving agents and researchers an instant sense of whether a topic is surging or cooling. The data is sourced from NCBI PubMed's 36M+ article index.
This endpoint is part of a broader suite of PubMed trend analytics APIs. Payment is handled via the x402 protocol: the server returns a 402 challenge with USDC payment instructions on Base L2, and any x402-compatible client can sign and retry to receive the JSON response. The price is $0.02 per query. No API keys or subscriptions are required.
The pulse endpoint accepts a single required parameter (`query`) and returns structured JSON with `current`, `year_ago`, and `change` objects keyed by time window. It pairs well with the sibling `/trends`, `/emerging`, `/hottest-weekly`, and `/keypapers` endpoints for deeper analysis workflows such as weekly research monitoring, biotech due diligence, or grant writing assistance.
Capabilities
Use cases
- —Weekly cron job monitoring publication activity for a therapeutic area and alerting on surges
- —Biotech due diligence — quickly check whether a company's core science area is gaining or losing research momentum
- —Grant writing — quantify recent publication growth to support a Significance section
- —AI agent pipeline that detects hot topics and then fetches key papers via sibling endpoints
- —Dashboard widget showing real-time research activity for a portfolio of scientific topics
Fit
Best for
- —AI agents needing structured biomedical trend data without API key setup
- —Researchers who want a quick quantitative pulse on any PubMed topic
- —Automated monitoring pipelines that run on a schedule and pay per query
- —Teams doing competitive intelligence across scientific domains
Not for
- —Full-text article retrieval or abstract content (use PubMed MCP or E-utilities for that)
- —Non-biomedical literature searches (covers PubMed-indexed content only)
- —High-volume bulk data dumps — pay-per-query model is designed for targeted queries
Quick start
# Using awal (Coinbase x402 client)
awal x402 pay 'https://pubmed.sekgen.xyz/api/v1/pulse?query=GLP-1+receptor+agonist'
# Pays $0.02 USDC on Base → returns 7d/30d/90d publication volumes with YoY changeExample
Request
{
"url": "https://pubmed.sekgen.xyz/api/v1/pulse?query=CRISPR",
"method": "GET"
}Response
{
"as_of": "2026-02-13",
"query": "CRISPR",
"change": {
"7d": 0.773,
"30d": 0.357,
"90d": 0.358
},
"current": {
"7d": 312,
"30d": 957,
"90d": 2778
},
"year_ago": {
"7d": 176,
"30d": 705,
"90d": 2046
}
}Endpoint
Quality
The endpoint is live (402 challenge captured), documentation is thorough with parameter tables and example responses, and pricing is clearly stated. No formal OpenAPI spec is published, but the docs page provides equivalent detail. Minor deductions for lack of machine-readable schema and truncated docs page.
Warnings
- —No formal OpenAPI/JSON schema published — parameter and response structure inferred from documentation examples
- —The /pricing and /README paths return 404; all pricing info comes from the docs and landing page only
Citations
- —The /pulse endpoint costs $0.02 per queryhttps://pubmed.sekgen.xyz/docs
- —Pulse returns 7d/30d/90d publication volume with year-over-year changehttps://pubmed.sekgen.xyz/docs
- —Payment is via x402 protocol using USDC on Base L2https://pubmed.sekgen.xyz
- —Data sourced from 36M+ PubMed articleshttps://pubmed.sekgen.xyz
- —The query parameter is required; no other parameters are neededhttps://pubmed.sekgen.xyz/docs
- —Example response structure with current, year_ago, and change objectshttps://pubmed.sekgen.xyz/docs