Research fronts on vitiligo, a Scopus based bibliometric survey

Abstract

"Bibliometrics is frequently used to analyze the structural evolution of research fields, especially in biomedical areas. The present paper provides a macrostructure for scientific research on vitiligo conducted in the last fifty years using bibliometric methods. The data were retrieved from Scopus. A total 6 109 papers related to vitiligo were processed. An analysis was conducted of specialized terms based on the structure of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus of the US National Library of Medicine. A structural approach was developed using term co-occurrence analysis. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify the macrostructure, applying the CONCOR (CONvergence of iterated CORrelations) algorithm. Global scientific production on vitiligo was found to have increased exponentially in the last fifty years. Structural analysis revealed eight research areas divided in two blocks. On the one hand, an experimental block comprising studies on vitiligo, its relationships with cancer and other autoimmune diseases, its pathophysiology and pathogenesis; and on the other, a block including clinical studies covering various therapeutic approaches as well as the incidence and prevalence of the disease. The methodology applied constitutes a valid tool for the description and classification of biomedical knowledge domains. It also makes it possible to obtain a macrostructure which may be validated through bibliographic reviews."

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