Marcadores biológicos e genéticos de desordens relacionadas ao glúten: uma abordagem cienciométrica

Abstract

Due to diagnostic limitations of gluten-related disorders (GRD) based on insufficient evidence or absence of them, biomarkers have been used in clinical practice to diagnose and monitor GRD. This study aimed to conduct a scientometric analysis of studies on biological and genetic markers from GRD (BGM-GRD). Literature was selected from the core collection of the Web of Science (WoS), between 1945 and October 9th, 2022, following PRISMA guidelines. Descriptive analysis was performed using WoS tools, Microsoft Excel and CiteSpace. 1,050 scientific articles from WoS were retrieved, of which 452 articles were eligible for this study. Serological markers, mainly antibodies (n=317), were analyzed by 72.8% of studies, while histopathological (23.2%) and genetic (17.2%) were analyzed less often. Studies have been performed on patients with specific diseases or conditions, primarily type 1 diabetes mellitus (24.1% of studies), followed by Down syndrome (6.2%), autism spectrum disorders (4.8%) and schizophrenia (4.1%). It was in 1984 that research on GRD markers started and keeps growing until now; the scientific production almost doubled from 2002 to 2021. The annual average of citations increased 46.1 times, which reflects the high research quality (H-index of 56). Of the 59 countries engaged in research on BGM-GRD, Italy (21.2% of world scientific production), USA (15.3%), Spain (10.8%), Sweden (8.9%), England (6.0%) and Finland (5.8%) published 58.0% of eligible studies. Countries with low production, such as Australia (2.0%), Germany (3.3%), Israel (2.4%) and Poland (2.9%) stood out in research quality and published five of the ten most articles cited. The USA constitutes the core of the largest collaboration network among 17 countries and presented the highest betweenness centrality and the only explosion of citations between 2013 and 2017, demonstrating their great influence in research on BGM GRD. Italy has the highest productivity. Almost half (46.7%) of the articles were published by 18 of the 817 research institutions. Institutions from Finland (University of Tampere, University Hospital of Tampere and University of Helsinki), Italy (University of Naples Federico II) and Sweden (University of Linkoping) were the most productive and covered 17.6% of world production. The main scientific collaboration networks between institutions focused on the areas of Psychiatry, Immunology, Pathology, Pediatrics and Genetics/Heredity and grouped the five largest clusters among the 192 clusters identified. Fourteen of the 221 journals covered 36.5% of the scientific production, while 52.8% of the articles were published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (n=63), Elsevier (n=62), Wiley (n=57) and Springer Nature (n=57). Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition (JPGN) was the most prominent scientific journal and covered 6.4% of scientific production. Since 2005 there has been a growing interest from the scientific community in studies on BGM-GRD, with emphasis on the NCGS, since there is no MBG for its accurate diagnosis. Trends and gaps in knowledge could be observed by the temporal evolution of the explosions of keywords. Studies on BGM-GRD are in increasing progress. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first scientometric analysis of the worldwide scientific literature on BGM-GRD.