Global Mapping of Interventions to Improve the Quality of Life of People Living with HIV/AIDS: Implications for Priority Settings.

Enhancing the quality of life (QOL) of people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) has become a significant global health goal, as combination antiretroviral therapy has helped to transform HIV/AIDS from a fatal illness to chronic disease. In this study, we aim to comprehensively describe the growth of research publications and the development of research landscapes regarding interventions to improve QOL among PLWH, as well as to characterize interdisciplinary topics and emerging interests of the research community. English articles and reviews published from 1991 to 2018 concerning interventions to improve QOL among PLWHA were retrieved from the Web of Science. Collaboration among organizations sharing coauthorships and co-occurrence network of authors' keywords was illustrated through network graphs. Latent Dirichlet Allocation was used for classifying papers into corresponding topics. A total of 2304 publications were included in the study. The USA continues to lead in research productivity, followed by South Africa, China, and India. Emerging research themes were found to be the application of multilevel interventions and long-term care, rehabilitation, along with topics relating to mental health issues, behavioral therapy and social supports for patients receiving treatments, and application of e-health approaches in designing and implementing interventions. There has been, however, a modest appearance of topics covering local, cultural, and environmental contexts of interventions. The findings of the study suggest expanding the coverage of psychosocial, behavioral, and contextualized interventions, increasing the involvement of family and community, improving the effectiveness of technology-based and e-health interventions, and developing strategies for lifelong treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Pre-exposure Prophylaxis in HIV Research: A Latent Dirichlet Allocation Analysis (GAPRESEARCH).

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has been shown to be an effective approach to prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections; however, implementation of the service remains challenging. This global bibliometric analysis aims to describe the current trends in HIV research prevention through PrEP to reveal the potential gaps of knowledge and to put forward recommendations for future research. A bibliometric analysis was conducted through Web of Science from 1990 to 2017. Exploratory factor analysis was also employed to find research domains emerging from the abstracts' contents. Latent Dirichlet allocation, which is a topic modeling algorithm, was utilized to perform text mining and determine relationships among text documents. A total of 4852 papers regarding HIV PrEP research were retrieved. The number of papers and their impact has significantly increased. Preventing sexual transmissions, improving access, and quality of health-care services for current users, as well as men who have sex with men, pregnant women and children, were the research domains most related to PrEP. We found a data gap in research regarding sex workers, potential side effects of PrEP, and misjudgment toward PrEP users. Despite the growth in research about HIV PrEP, there exist barriers to scaling up the implementation of PrEP worldwide and for such intervention to reach its fWull potential. International research collaboration efforts to investigate the potential safety concerns of PrEP and develop strategies to eliminate social misjudgment against PrEP users are warranted. Addressing these knowledge gaps might facilitate the development of effective global implementation strategies for PrEP in the future.

Indices of Change, Expectations, and Popularity of Biological Treatments for Major Depressive Disorder between 1988 and 2017: A Scientometric Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is the most common psychiatric disorder with high prevalence and disease burden. Biological treatments of MDD over the last several decades include a wide range of antidepressants and neurostimulation therapies. While recent meta-analyses have explored the efficacy and tolerability of antidepressants, the changing trends of biological treatments have not been evaluated. Our study measured the indices of change, expectations, and popularity of biological treatments of MDD between 1988 and 2017. METHODS: We performed a scientometric analysis to identify all relevant publications related to biological treatments of MDD from 1988 to 2017. We searched the Web of Science websites for publications from 1 January 1988 to 31 December 2017. We included publications of fluoxetine, paroxetine, citalopram, sertraline, amitriptyline, fluvoxamine, escitalopram, venlafaxine, duloxetine, milnacipran, desvenlafaxine, levomilnacipran, clomipramine, nortriptyline, bupropion, trazodone, nefazodone, mirtazapine, agomelatine, vortioxetine, vilazodone, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), deep brain stimulation (DBS), and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). We excluded grey literature, conference proceedings, books/book chapters, and publications with low quality as well as publications not related to medicine or human health. The primary outcomes assessed were indices of change, expectations, and popularity. RESULTS: Of 489,496 publications identified, we included 355,116 publications in this scientometric analysis. For the index of change, fluoxetine, sertraline and ECT demonstrated a positive index of change in 6 consecutive periods. Other neurostimulation therapies including rTMS, VNS, DBS and tDCS had shown a positive index of change since 1998. We calculated the index of change of popularity index (PI), which indicates that from 2013 to 2017, the number of publications on tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) were reduced by 85.0% and 81.3% respectively, as compared with the period 2008-2012. For the index of expectation, fluoxetine and ECT showed the highest index of expectations in six consecutive periods and remained the highest in 2013-2017. For popularity, the three antidepressants with highest PI were fluoxetine (4.01), paroxetine (2.09), and sertraline (1.66); the three antidepressants with lowest PI were desvenlafaxine (0.08), vilazodone (0.04) and levomilnacipran (0.03). Among neurostimulation therapies, ECT has the highest PI (2.55), and tDCS the lowest PI (0.14). The PI of SSRI remained the highest among all biological treatments of MDD in 2013-2017. In contrast, the PI of ECT was reduced by approximately 50% during the period 2008 to2012 than that in the period 2013 to 2017. CONCLUSIONS: This scientometric analysis represents comprehensive evidence on the popularity and change in prospects of biological treatments for MDD from 1988 to 2017. The popularity of SSRI peaked between 1998 and 2002, when their efficacy, tolerability and safety profile allowed them to replace the TCAs and MAOIs. While the newer neurostimulation therapies are gaining momentum, the popularity of ECT has sustained.