Quantitative analysis of the scientific literature on acetaminophen in medicine and biology: a 2003–2005 study†

Abstract

This study quantifies the utilization of acetaminophen in life sciences and clinical medicine using bibliometric indicators. A total of 1626 documents involving acetaminophen published by 74 countries during 2003-2005 in the Thompson-Scientific Life sciences and Clinical Medicine collections were identified and analyzed. The USA leads in the number of publications followed by the UK, and industrialized countries, including France, Japan and Germany; the presence of countries such as China, India and Turkey among the top 15 countries deserves to be noticed. The European Union stands as a comparable contributor to the USA, both in terms of number of publications and in terms of profile of papers distributed among subcategories of Life Sciences and Clinical Medicine disciplines. All documents were published in 539 different journals. The most prolific journals were related to pharmacology and/or pharmaceutics. All aspects of acetaminophen (chemistry, pharmacokinetics, metabolism, etc.) were studied with primary interest for therapeutic use (42%) and adverse effects (28%) comprising a large part of publications focusing on acetaminophen hepatotoxicity. This quantitative overview provides as to the interest of the scientific community in this analgesic and completes the various review documents that regularly appear in the scientific literature.

Global research productivity of N-acetylcysteine use in paracetamol overdose

“…4 The evolution of scientific output in the field of toxicology has been poorly explored to date and there are few internationally published reports on research activity in toxicology. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Paracetamol also maintains substantial interest among researchers, as demonstrated by the continuous growth of scientific literature. During the past years, publications involving paracetamol have increased 60 times.…”

“…During the past years, publications involving paracetamol have increased 60 times. 13,14 It is interesting to note that publications in general medical field have only increased threefold. To the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of data concerning the evaluation of scientific research productivity of NAC use in paracetamol overdose worldwide.…”

The 100 most influential publications in paracetamol poisoning treatment: a bibliometric analysis of human studies

“…The search terms used to retrieve articles related to paracetamol poisoning treatment were elected from previous bibliometric studies related to paracetamol (Robert et al 2009; Zyoud et al 2015a, d). The articles entitled with the terms “acetaminophen” or “paracetamol” or “acetamidophenol” or “hydroxyacetanilide” or “tylenol” or “ n -acetyl- p -aminophenol” or “panadol” or “APAP” or “acephen” were included in the research.…”