Asthma research performance in Asia-Pacific: a bibliometric analysis by searching PubMed database.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Countries in the Asia-Pacific region have experienced an increase in the prevalence of asthma, and they have been actively involved in asthma research recently. This study aimed to analyze asthma research from Asia-Pacific in the last decade by bibliometric method.

METHOD: Asthma articles from Asia-Pacific countries published between 1998 and 2007 were retrieved from PubMed by searching MeSH for "asthma."

RESULTS: Most of published asthma articles in Asia-Pacific are from affluent countries in northeast Asia and Oceania. Australia and Japan have been the regional powerhouses since they contributed more than half of regional articles on asthma. Asthma publications from emerging economies in Asia such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, have dramatically increased in the last decade in terms of quantity and quality aspects and were considerable sources of basic and translational research in the region. Mainland China and India have significantly increased their research capacity as well, but quality needs to be improved. Asthma publications from New Zealand and Australia, countries with the highest asthma prevalence rates in the world, yielded highest citation counts per articles and were published in journals with high impact factor. Asthma research parameters per million population correlate well with gross domestic product per capita. Almost half (41%) of total articles were produced from only 25 institutions in the region and almost half of them (47%) were published in 20 journals.

CONCLUSIONS: Asthma research in Asia-Pacific were mainly conducted in countries in Oceania and Northeast Asia and research performance strongly correlated with the nation's wealth. Interesting asthma research projects in the region were recommended.