A Bibliometric Analysis on Dengue Outbreaks in Tropical and Sub-Tropical Climates Worldwide Since 1950

Abstract

Severe dengue outbreaks (DOs) affect the majority of Asian and Latin American countries. Whether all DOs always occurred in sub-tropical and tropical areas (STTA) has not been verified. We downloaded abstracts by searching keywords “dengue (MeSH Major Topic)” from Pubmed Central since 1950, including three collections: country names in abstracts (CNA), no abstracts (WA), and no country names in abstracts (Non-CNA). Visualizations were created to present the DOs across countries/areas in STTA. The percentages of mentioned country names and authors’ countries in STTA were computed on the CNA and Non-CNA bases. The social network analysis was applied to highlight the most cited articles and countries. We found that (1) three collections are 3427 (25.48%), 3137 (23.33%), and 6884 (51.19%) in CNA, WA, and Non-CNA, respectively; (2) the percentages of 94.3% and 79.9% were found in the CNA and Non-CNA groups; (3) the most mentioned country in abstracts were India, Thailand, and Brazil; (4) most authors in the Non-CNA collections were from the United States, Brazil, and China; (5) the most cited article (PMID = 23563266) authored by Bhatt et al. had 2604 citations since 2013. Our findings provide in-depth insights into the DO knowledge. The research approaches are recommended for authors in research on other infectious diseases in the future, not just limited to the DO topic.