Global research trends of World Health Organization’s top eight emerging pathogens

Abstract

BackgroundOn December 8th, 2015, World Health Organization published a priority list of eight pathogens expected to cause severe outbreaks in the near future. To better understand global research trends and characteristics of publications on these emerging pathogens, we carried out this bibliometric study hoping to contribute to global awareness and preparedness toward this topic.MethodScopus database was searched for the following pathogens/infectious diseases: Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Rift valley, Crimean-Congo, Nipah, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Severe Respiratory Acute Syndrome (SARS). Retrieved articles were analyzed to obtain standard bibliometric indicators.ResultsA total of 8619 journal articles were retrieved. Authors from 154 different countries contributed to publishing these articles. Two peaks of publications, an early one for SARS and a late one for Ebola, were observed. Retrieved articles received a total of 221,606 citations with a mean ± standard deviation of 25.7 ± 65.4 citations per article and an h-index of 173. International collaboration was as high as 86.9%. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had the highest share (344; 5.0%) followed by the University of Hong Kong with 305 (4.5%). The top leading journal was Journal of Virology with 572 (6.6%) articles while Feldmann, Heinz R. was the most productive researcher with 197 (2.3%) articles. China ranked first on SARS, Turkey ranked first on Crimean-Congo fever, while the United States of America ranked first on the remaining six diseases. Of retrieved articles, 472 (5.5%) were on vaccine – related research with Ebola vaccine being most studied.ConclusionNumber of publications on studied pathogens showed sudden dramatic rise in the past two decades representing severe global outbreaks. Contribution of a large number of different countries and the relatively high h-index are indicative of how international collaboration can create common health agenda among distant different countries.

Bibliometric analysis of global publications in medication adherence (1900–2017)

“…This is in contrast to systematic review in which duplicate documents are usually present because of the use of different databases. In bibliometric analysis, the retrieved documents need to be checked for the presence of false‐positive results . In the current study, false‐positive results were identified by screening and manually reviewing 10% of the retrieved documents, usually the top‐cited articles.…”

Isolation and Full-Genome Characterization of Nipah Viruses from Bats, Bangladesh

“…It is considered a global health priority by the World Health Organization and has pandemic potential because of its zoonotic nature, human-to-human transmissibility, wide geographic distribution of bat reservoir species, high case-fatality rate in humans, and lack of available vaccine or therapeutic agents ( 1 ). Although NiV or NiV-related infections have been demonstrated by serologic surveillance or PCR detection in several bat species across extensive areas, attempts to isolate live NiV have been unsuccessful; there have been only 3 successful reports: Pteropus hypomelanus bats ( 2 ) and P. vapmyrus bats ( 3 ) in Malaysia and P. lylei bats in Cambodia ( 4 ).…”

MERS: an emerging disease of the 21st century

“…50 On the other hand, SARS has been the focus of 3379 publications, given the wider time frame of these studies when compared with those of MERS-CoV as a crude explanation. 51 Moreover, the awareness of the global community to the importance of research in controlling and preventing novel infectious diseases was clearly manifested in WHO's list of top emerging diseases with epidemic potential; in which MERS ranked 5 th and SARS ranked 6 th . …”