Half a century of research on antipsychotics and schizophrenia: A scientometric study of hotspots, nodes, bursts, and trends

• Published in: Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews Vol. 136; p. 104608
• Main Authors: Sabe, Michel, Pillinger, Toby, Kaiser, Stefan, Chen, Chaomei, Taipale, Heidi, Tanskanen, Antti, Tiihonen, Jari, Leucht, Stefan, Correll, Christoph U., Solmi, Marco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Ltd 01.05.2022
• Subjects: Antipsychotic Agents - therapeutic use; CiteSpace; Evidence synthesis; Humans; Meta-analysis; Psychosis; Schizophrenia - drug therapy; Scientometric; Systematic review; Psychosis; RCT; Scientometric; WOSCC; Systematic review; CiteSpace; ICD; Evidence synthesis; Meta-analysis; DSM
• ISSN: 0149-7634; 1873-7528; 1873-7528
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104608

Changes over 50 years of research on antipsychotics in schizophrenia have occurred. A scientometric synthesis of such changes over time and a measure of researchers' networks and scientific productivity is currently lacking. We searched Web of Science Core Collection from inception until November 5, 2021, using the appropriate key. Our primary objective was to conduct systematic mapping with CiteSpace to show how clusters of keywords have evolved over time and obtain clusters’ structure and credibility. Our secondary objective was to measure research network performance (countries, institutions, and authors) using CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Bibliometrix. We included 32,240 studies published between 1955 and 2021. The co-cited reference network identified 25 clusters with a well-structured network (Q=0.8166) and highly credible clustering (S=0.91). The main trends of research were: 1) antipsychotic efficacy; 2) cognition in schizophrenia; 3) side effects of antipsychotics. Last five years research trends were: ‘ultra-resistance schizophrenia’ (S=0.925), ‘efficacy/dose-response’ (S=0.775), ‘evidence-synthesis’ (S=0.737), ‘real-world effectiveness’ (S=0.794), ‘cannabidiol’ (S=0.989), and ‘gut microbiome’ (S=0.842). These results can inform funding agencies and research groups' future directions. •First broad scientometric analysis over 50 years of research on antipsychotics.•This work provides insight on evolution of research trends on antipsychotics in schizophrenia.•Latest trends were safety/long-acting injectable, evidence synthesis and real-world evidence.•USA is dominating the research field, and China is developing rapidly.•Influence of authors, institutions, countries and latest research trends were identified.