Characteristics and popular topics of latest researches into the effects of air particulate matter on cardiovascular system by bibliometric analysis

Abstract

In recent years, many epidemiological and toxicological studies have investigated the adverse effects of air particulate matter (PM) on the cardiovascular system. However, it is difficult for the researchers to have a timely and effective overall command of the latest characteristics and popular topics in such a wide field. Different from the previous reviews, in which the research characteristics and trends are empirically concluded by experts, we try to have a comprehensive evaluation of the above topics for the first time by bibliometric analysis, a quantitative tool in information exploration. This study aims to introduce the bibliometric method into the field of PM and cardiovascular system. The articles were selected by searching PubMed/MEDLINE (from 2007 to 2012) using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms "particulate matter" and "cardiovascular system". A total of 935 eligible articles and 1895 MeSH terms were retrieved and processed by the software Thomson Data Analyzer (TDA). The bibliographic information and the MeSH terms of these articles were classified and analyzed to summarize the research characteristics. The top 200 high-frequency MeSH terms (the cumulative frequency percentage was 74.2%) were clustered for popular-topic conclusion. We summarized the characteristics of published articles, of researcher collaborations and of the contents. Ten clusters of MeSH terms are presented. Six popular topics are concluded and elaborated for reference. Our study presents an overview of the characteristics and popular topics in the field of PM and cardiovascular system in the past five years by bibliometric tools, which may provide a new perspective for future researchers.

Quality of pharmacy-specific Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) assignment in pharmacy journals indexed in MEDLINE

“…13 Besides providing a consistent way of retrieving information, MeSH can also be indicative of popular topics within a scientific area. [14][15][16] Articles indexed under the same set of MeSH terms should refer to the same research field. 17 During the indexing process in PubMed, articles are assigned an average of 10 MeSH terms by professional catalogers to reflect their content.…”

Particulate matter and atherosclerosis: a bibliometric analysis of original research articles published in 1973–2014

“…Co-occurrence of word (co-word) analysis is a basic and important approach for themes exploration, which include three steps: measurement of the links between terms, organization of clusters, and concluding the topics [ 1 ]. The 225 × 225 co-occurrence frequency matrices of the top 225 MeSH terms were conducted using the TDA software.…”

“…Exposure to air particulate matter (PM) may result in various diseases including cardiovascular diseases (CVD) such as atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, stroke, myocardial ischemia, coronary diseases and cardiac arrhythmia. Its etiology and pathogenic mechanisms may be complex, which include pulmonary and systemic inflammation, accelerated atherosclerosis and altered cardiac autonomic functions [ 1 , 2 ]. PM contributes to increased cardiac risk by initiating and promoting atherosclerotic progression, which is the underlying cause of most cardiovascular diseases [ 3 ].…”

“…Bibliometrics refers to a research methodology employed in library and information sciences, which utilizes quantitative analysis and statistics to describe the bibliographic information of articles (year publication, title, authors, publisher, affiliations, etc.) within a given topic, field, institution, and/or country [ 1 , 8 ]. Recently, bibliometrics has been used to explore trends in biomedical, medical and environmental research fields; such as the mapping of global drinking water from 1992 to 2011 [ 8 ], air PM on the cardiovascular system [ 1 ], urban health for the period 1978–2012 [ 1 ], stem cell research in Iran [ 9 ], cardiovascular research from Latin America from 1999 to 2008 [ 10 ], and ophthalmology research from 1997 to 2009 [ 11 ].…”

“…Bibliometrics applies quantitative and statistical methods to analyze a variety of phenomena across scientific literatures. Literature data are mainly derived from international literature databases such as PubMed/MEDLINE [ 1 ], Springerlink [ 12 ], and Web of Science [ 13 ]. In the present study, we attempted to analyze the characteristics and trends within the research fields of PM and atherosclerosis using the bibliometric approach by conducting a search on the PubMed/MEDLINE database using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms.…”