J Korean Med Sci.  2023 Mar;38(11):e93. 10.3346/jkms.2023.38.e93.

Comorbidities in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Scopus-Based Bibliometric Analysis

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Pathophysiology, Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
  • 2Department of Clinical Rheumatology and Immunology, University Hospital in Krakow, Krakow, Poland
  • 3National Institute of Geriatrics, Rheumatology and Rehabilitation, Warsaw, Poland
  • 4Department of Internal Medicine N2, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, Ukraine

Abstract

Background
Comorbidities attract enormous attention amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Mapping knowledge based on these clinical conditions is increasingly important since the pandemic is still raging and primarily affecting subjects with chronic diseases and comorbidities. Clinical presentation and complications of COVID-19 are still hot topics which are explored in numerous evidence-based publications. The aim of this study was to analyze Scopus-indexed COVID-19 papers covering comorbidities.
Methods
Searches through the Scopus database were performed on September 19, 2022 using the following keywords: “Diabetes mellitus” OR “Cardiovascular Diseases” OR “Rheumatic Diseases” OR “Obesity” OR “Malignancies” AND “COVID-19.” All retrieved articles were analyzed using the following categories: document type, authorship, keywords, journal, citation score, country of origin, and language. Using the software tool VOSviewer version 1.6.18, we visualized the network of authors and keywords co-occurrence of the most prevalent comorbidities reported in connection with COVID-19.
Results
Reports on COVID-19 and diabetes mellitus (DM) were most frequently published (n = 12,282). The US was the most productive country (n = 3,005) in the field of COVID-19 and comorbidities. There were 1,314 documents on COVID-19 and rheumatic diseases which is the least number in comparison with other comorbidities (COVID-19 and DM: 12,282, COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease: 9,911, COVID-19 and obesity: 7,070, and COVID-19 and malignancies: 1,758).

Keyword

COVID-19; Comorbidities; Bibliometric Analysis; Scopus

Figure

  • Fig. 1 Depiction of interplay between COVID-19 and comorbid diseases. (A-E) Visualization of authors' network (1) and keywords' network (2) in COVID-19 and DM (A1, A2), COVID-19 and CVD (B1, B2), COVID-19 and RD (C1, C2), COVID-19 and obesity (D1, D2), and COVID-19 and malignancies.COVID-19 = coronavirus disease 2019, DM = diabetes mellitus, CVD = cardiovascular disease, RD = rheumatic disease.


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