Abstract
BackgroundCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in 2019 and has since caused a global pandemic. Since its emergence, COVID-19 has hugely impacted healthcare, including pediatrics. This study aimed to explore the current status and hotspots of pediatric COVID-19 research using bibliometric analysis.MethodsThe Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science core collection database was searched for articles on pediatric COVID-19 to identify original articles that met the criteria. The retrieval period ranged from the creation of the database to September 20, 2021. A total of 3,561 original articles written in English were selected to obtain data, such as author names, titles, source publications, number of citations, author affiliations, and countries where the studies were conducted. Microsoft Excel (Microsoft, Redmond, WA) was used to create charts related to countries, authors, and institutions. VOSviewer (Center for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands) was used to create visual network diagrams of keyword, author, and country co-occurrence.ResultsWe screened 3,561 publications with a total citation frequency of 30,528. The United States had the most published articles (1188 articles) and contributed the most with author co-occurrences. The author with the most published articles was Villani from the University of Padua, Italy. He also contributed the most co-authored articles. The most productive institution was Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. The institution with the most frequently cited published articles was Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. The United States cooperated most with other countries. Research hotspots were divided into two clusters: social research and clinical research. Besides COVID-19 and children, the most frequent keywords were pandemic (251 times), mental health (187 times), health (172 times), impact (148 times), and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) (144 times).ConclusionPediatric COVID-19 has attracted considerable attention worldwide, leading to a considerable number of articles published over the past 2 years. The United States, China, and Italy have leading roles in pediatric COVID-19 research. The new research hotspot is gradually shifting from COVID-19 and its related clinical studies to studies of its psychological and social impacts on children.
Highlights
There is an ongoing worldwide pandemic involving a novel virus belonging to the family of coronaviruses (CoVs), including large, enveloped, positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses [1]
Acute myocarditis with intense systemic inflammation and atypical Kawasaki disease have emerged as severe pediatric diseases after SARS-CoV-2 infection [4, 8]
A total of 6,510 publications on COVID-19 and children were retrieved from the Core Collection Database of Web of Science
Summary
There is an ongoing worldwide pandemic involving a novel virus belonging to the family of coronaviruses (CoVs), including large, enveloped, positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses [1]. The virus that caused this pandemic is the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and the disease it causes is the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). As of September 20, 2021, 228,506,698 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed, including 4,692,361 deaths reported to the World Health Organization [2], and this number continues to increase. According to current epidemiological trends, children are less likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 than adults, and most pediatric cases are asymptomatic or mild [3]. Acute myocarditis with intense systemic inflammation and atypical Kawasaki disease have emerged as severe pediatric diseases after SARS-CoV-2 infection [4, 8]. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in 2019 and has since caused a global pandemic. COVID-19 has hugely impacted healthcare, including pediatrics. This study aimed to explore the current status and hotspots of pediatric COVID-19 research using bibliometric analysis
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