Mapping of Chagas disease research: analysis of publications in the period between 1940 and 2009

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Publications are often used as a measure of success in research work. Chagas disease occurs in Central and Southern America. However, during the past years, the disease has been occurring outside Latin America due to migration from endemic zones. This article describes a bibliometric review of the literature on Chagas disease research indexed in PubMed during a 70-year period. METHODS: Medline was used via the PubMed online service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine from 1940 to 2009. The search strategy was: Chagas disease [MeSH] OR Trypanosoma cruzi [MeSH]. RESULTS: A total of 13,989 references were retrieved. The number of publications increased steadily over time from 1,361 (1940-1969) to 5,430 (2000-2009) (coefficient of determination for linear fit, R²=0.910). Eight journals contained 25% of the Chagas disease literature. Of the publications, 64.2% came from endemic countries. Brazil was the predominant country (37%), followed by the United States (17.6%) and Argentina (14%). The ranking in production changed when the number of publications was normalized by estimated cases of Chagas disease (Panama and Uruguay), population (Argentina and Uruguay), and gross domestic product (Bolivia and Brazil). CONCLUSIONS: Several Latin American countries, where the prevalence of T. cruzi infection was not very high, were the main producers of the Chagas disease literature, after adjusting for economic and population indexes. The countries with more estimated cases of Chagas disease produced less research on Chagas disease than some developed countries.

El Salvador publications in the Science Citation Index Expanded: subjects, authorship, collaboration and citation patterns

“…The importance of health research is appropriate for a tropical country (Vargas, Dovalina, & de Arenas, 2004;Fernández, Sancho, Morillo, De Filippo, & Gómez, 2005;Alger et al, 2009;Ramos et al, 2011).…”

Scientific authorships and collaboration network analysis on Chagas disease: papers indexed in PubMed (1940-2009)

“…This fact can be explained by the interest taken by individual researchers in Chagas disease and Trypanosomiasis in different countries (due in large part to the broad geographical dissemination of the disease, which has spilled over from Latin America into the United States, Canada and Europe), resulting in a myriad of papers (ABAD FRANCH et al 2011;RAMOS et al 2011). The higher number of Brazilian researchers can be attributed to the greater size and development of this country's scientific system, which has become the principal scientific reference in South America.…”

“…These efforts serve to promote synergies that contribute to an international network that improves care and strengthens the development of strategic studies in the area (ALMEIDA et al 2009;RAMOS JUNIOR et al 2010). In addition, it would be necessary to foster research in countries with high prevalence of the disease but where no notably productive authors have been identified, such as in Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras, El Salvador and Paraguay (RAMOS et al 2011). This is also true for countries like Venezuela or Colombia, where only one key researcher has been identified.…”

“…Research on Chagas disease has evolved throughout the last decades due to changes in public health policies and social factors, with an increase in the research areas, as can be seen in the rise in scientific publications, most of them published in international journals (RAMOS et al 2011). For this reason, it is important to identify the main authors responsible for publications on Chagas disease and their collaborative patterns in order to promote cooperative and translational scientific research initiatives.…”

Bibliometry of Panama publications in the Science Citation Index Expanded: publication type, language, fields, authors and institutions

“…At the Latin American level, Panama produces 4 % of all documents about the systematics of tropical organisms (Michan & Llorente-Bousquets, 2010) and has an important production of documents about Chagas disease (Ramos et al, 2011). Nevertheless, Panama also is one of the countries in the region where epidemiological studies had the lowest growth rate in recent years (Barreto et al, 2012).…”