COVID-19 pharmacological research trends: a bibliometric analysis

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is ravaging the world. Many therapies have been explored to treat COVID-19. This report aimed to assess the global research trends for the development of COVID-19 therapies. METHODS: We searched the relevant articles on COVID-19 therapies published from January 1, 2020, to May 25, 2022, in the Web of Science Core Collection Database (WOSCC). VOSviewer 1.6.18 software was used to assess data on the countries, institutions, authors, collaborations, keywords, and journals that were most implicated in COVID-19 pharmacological research. The latest research and changing trends in COVID-19-relevant pharmacological research were analyzed. RESULTS: After manually eliminating articles that do not meet the requirements, a total of 5,289 studies authored by 32,932 researchers were eventually included in the analyses, which comprised 95 randomized controlled trials. 3,044 (57.6%) studies were published in 2021. The USA conducted the greatest number of studies, followed by China and India. The primary USA collaborators were China and England. The topics covered in the publications included: the general characteristics, the impact on pharmacists’ work, the pharmacological research, broad-spectrum antiviral drug therapy and research, and promising targets or preventive measures, such as vaccine. The temporal diagram revealed that the current research hotspots focused on the vaccine, molecular docking, Mpro, and drug delivery keywords. CONCLUSION: Comprehensive bibliometric analysis could aid the rapid identification of the principal research topics, potential collaborators, and the direction of future research. Pharmacological research is critical for the development of therapeutic and preventive COVID-19-associated measures. This study may therefore provide valuable information for eradicating COVID-19.