Abstract
Clavulanic acid (CA), a potent inhibitor of the β-lactam, ase enzyme, is frequently co-formulated with a broad spectrum of antibiotics to treat infections caused by β-lactamase-producing pathogens. In order to evaluate the impact and the progress of CA studies in the last four decades, a bibliometric analysis of the global scientific production of CA was carried out. A total of 39,758 records in the field of CA were indexed in the Scopus database for a 43-year period of study (1975–2017). The results indicated that CA studies have grown, showing three phases (1975–1999, 2000–2003 and 2004–2017) based on records of publications; the results showed a sigmoidal profile. Medicine was the main subject area for CA studies, whereas biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology were areas of research for CA production by Streptomyces clavuligerus (S. clavuligerus). Nevertheless, chemical engineering (as a subject area) had the highest increase in the percentage of publications related to CA production by S. clavuligerus. The United States, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and Brazil were the leading countries in the scientific production of studies on both CA and CA related to S. clavuligerus. This analysis allowed the identification of the area of knowledge with the highest impact on CA studies, the top researchers and their geographic distribution, and also helped to highlight the existence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria as an emergent area in CA research.
Highlights
Many microorganisms have the ability to produce bioactive compounds that can serve as an effective drug(s) for treatments against multidrug-resistant bacteria [1,2,3,4,5]
More than 40,000 documents related to clavulanic acid (CA) have been published in the last 40 years; the record of CA publications has been rather constant in the last decade, indicating a stagnation in this field
The bibliometric analysis of this study allowed the identification of medicine and biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, as the areas of knowledge with the highest impact on CA and CA production by S. clavuligerus studies, respectively
Summary
Many microorganisms have the ability to produce bioactive compounds (or compounds to be further modified for higher efficacy) that can serve as an effective drug(s) for treatments against multidrug-resistant bacteria [1,2,3,4,5]. Actinomycetes have been reported as producers of anticarcinogen, antioxidants, antivirals and antibacterials [4,5,6,7,8]. In this regard, Streptomyces clavuligerus (S. clavuligerus), which belongs to the Actinobacteria family, is an aerobic and Gram-positive bacterium that produces β-lactam antibiotics, such as cephamycin C and clavulanic acid (CA) [9]. Studies on bibliometric analysis have been used by researchers to examine and assess the specific growth of publications on medical research [13,14,15,16]. Since CA has been playing an important role in global health, it would be beneficial to provide a comprehensive view and analysis of the status of the research in this field
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