Bibliometric analysis of Scopus indexed publications on polymyxin resistance (2009-2018)

Abstract

Background: Antimicrobial resistance is a serious public health problem that has become a global threat. Special attention should be given to polymyxins (polymyxin B and colistin) which, since their reintroduction into clinical practice, are considered "last resort" drugs. The objective of this study is to perform a bibliometric analysis of scientific research on polymyxin resistance.Methods: Scopus database was used to retrieve documents relevant to polymyxin resistance. At the beginning, all kinds of documents without year restrictions were included. Subsequently, the study period (2009-2018) was limited and analyzed using SciVal. Specifically, the 10 institutions and countries with the highest production, authors, journals, and most cited articles were analyzed. The growth of publications and citations was graphed, in addition to an analysis of the keywords using VOSviewer.Results: A total of 1,306 documents were retrieved (1947-2019). Original articles (76.95%) and letters to the editor (15.47%) were the most frequent types of documents. English was the predominant language with 1,270 documents (97.2%). In the period 2009-2018, there was a significant growth in publications (p-value < 0.001) retrieving 833 (64%) documents. The received citations were 23,974, with a peak in 2016 (8,033 citations). The United States and China lead the scientific production with 146 (17.5%) and 137 (16.4%) publications, respectively. University of Fribourg (Switzerland) was the most productive institution on the subject (44 documents), although University of Zhejiang (China) has caused the greatest impact (73.5 citations/article). Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy ranked first with 140 documents. Most of the documents were published in quartile 1 journals (82.7% and 69.1%, according to Scimago Journal & Country Rank and CiteScore, respectively).Conclusions: The number of documents on polymyxin resistance has increased significantly in the recent years. In the last few years alone, 64% of all documents have been published. The United States and China lead the scientific production. Greater efforts are still needed to tackle this global problem.