Non-Pharmacological Interventions for Reducing Fear and Anxiety in Patients Undergoing Third Molar Extraction under Local Anesthesia: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

This report investigated the effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions for reducing dental fear and anxiety in patients undergoing third molar extraction under local anesthesia. In November 2020, multiple electronic databases (Cochrane, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, PsycArticles, PubMed, and Web of Science) were searched for articles published in English. Inclusion criteria were randomized-controlled trials reporting the effectiveness of any non-pharmacological interventions in reducing fear or anxiety levels in patients with third molar extraction. A total of 3015 studies by electronic search and 2 studies by hand search were identified. After screening, 21 studies were eligible for systematic review. Seven studies were included in the meta-analysis. Study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment of the included studies were performed by two independent investigators. The anxiety levels after intervention in each study were pooled and meta-analyzed by the random-effect model. A significant reduction in anxiety level was observed in non-pharmacological intervention groups (SMD = -0.32; 95% CI -0.57 to -0.07; p = 0.01). Subgroup analyses showed that a significant anxiety reduction by non-pharmacological interventions could be demonstrated by pooled data from studies using psychometric assessments, but not from studies using physiological assessments. Non-pharmacological interventions appear to reduce fear and anxiety levels in patients undergoing third molar extraction under local anesthesia.

Digital Teaching in Medical Education: Scientific Literature Landscape Review.

BACKGROUND: Digital teaching in medical education has grown in popularity in the recent years. However, to the best of our knowledge, no bibliometric report to date has been published that analyzes this important literature set to reveal prevailing topics and trends and their impacts reflected in citation counts. OBJECTIVE: We used a bibliometric approach to unveil and evaluate the scientific literature on digital teaching research in medical education, demonstrating recurring research topics, productive authors, research organizations, countries, and journals. We further aimed to discuss some of the topics and findings reported by specific highly cited works. METHODS: The Web of Science electronic database was searched to identify relevant papers on digital teaching research in medical education. Basic bibliographic data were obtained by the "Analyze" and "Create Citation Report" functions of the database. Complete bibliographic data were exported to VOSviewer for further analyses. Visualization maps were generated to display the recurring author keywords and terms mentioned in the titles and abstracts of the publications. RESULTS: The analysis was based on data from 3978 papers that were identified. The literature received worldwide contributions with the most productive countries being the United States and United Kingdom. Reviews were significantly more cited, but the citations between open access vs non-open access papers did not significantly differ. Some themes were cited more often, reflected by terms such as virtual reality, innovation, trial, effectiveness, and anatomy. Different aspects in medical education were experimented for digital teaching, such as gross anatomy education, histology, complementary medicine, medicinal chemistry, and basic life support. Some studies have shown that digital teaching could increase learning satisfaction, knowledge gain, and even cost-effectiveness. More studies were conducted on trainees than on undergraduate students. CONCLUSIONS: Digital teaching in medical education is expected to flourish in the future, especially during this era of COVID-19 pandemic.

The ethnopharmacological literature: An analysis of the scientific landscape.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: The research into bioactive natural products originating from medicinal plants, fungi and other organisms has a long history, accumulating abundant and diverse publications. However no quantitative literature analysis has been conducted so far. AIM OF THE STUDY: Here we analyze the bibliometric data of ethnopharmacology literature and relate the semantic content to the publication and citation data so that the major research themes, contributors, and journals of different time periods could be identified and evaluated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Web of Science (WoS) was searched to identify relevant publications. The Analyze function of WoS and bibliometric software (VOSviewer) were utilized to perform the analyses. RESULTS: Until the end of November 2018, 59,576 publications -linked to 'ethnopharmacology' indexed by WoS, published since 1958 in more than 5600 journals, and contributed by over 20,600 institutions located in more than 200 countries/regions, were identified. The papers were published under four dominating WoS categories, namely pharmacology/pharmacy (34.4%), plant sciences (28.6%), medicinal chemistry (25.3%), and integrative complementary medicine (20.6%). India (14.6%) and China (13.2%) were dominating the publication space. The United States and Brazil also had more than 8.0% contribution each. The rest of the top ten countries/regions were mainly from Asia. There were around ten-fold more original articles (84.6%) than reviews (8.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Ethnopharmacological research has a consistent focus on food and plant sciences, (bio)chemistry, complementary medicine and pharmacology, with a more limited scientific acceptance in the socio-cultural sciences. Dynamic global contributions have been shifting from developed countries to economically and scientifically emerging countries in Asia, South America and the Middle East. Research on recording medicinal plant species used by traditional medicine continues, but the evaluation of specific properties or treatment effects of extracts and compounds has increased enormously. Moreover increasing attention is paid to some widely distributed natural products, such as curcumin, quercetin, and rutin.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food: A bibliometric analysis of the most cited papers focusing on nutraceuticals and functional foods.

The current study aimed to identify and analyze the 100 most cited papers on the topic of nutraceuticals and functional foods. Scopus database was searched to extract bibliometric data. Two-thirds of the 100 most cited papers were reviews. Papers were mostly published in food science and nutrition journals, and one-third were published in seven journals, namely: British Journal of Nutrition (6), Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition (6), Journal of Food Science (5), Trends in Food Science and Technology (5), American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (4), Food Chemistry (4) and Journal of Nutrition (4). Topics with high citation counts dealt with prebiotics, probiotics, antioxidants and phenolic content. Hot topics with over 1000 citations per paper include bifidobacterium (1147), colon (1032) and lipid metabolism (1013). The United States and Europe were major places of origin. These results can serve as a quick benchmarking reference for researchers or general public members.

Ethnopharmacology-A Bibliometric Analysis of a Field of Research Meandering Between Medicine and Food Science?

Background: The research into bioactive natural products of medicinal plants has a long tradition, but ethnopharmacology as a well-defined field of research has a relatively short history, only dating back 50 years. Aims: With the fast development of this field and its global importance especially in the fast developing economies of Asia it is timely to assess the most influential articles (as measured by citations) and to identify important drivers and research trends in this field. Methods: Scopus was searched to identify relevant articles which were assessed by all three authors. The 100 most cited articles were identified and analyzed. Bibliometric software (VOSviewer) was utilized to supplement the analysis and to generate a term map that visualized the citation patterns of the 100 articles containing different terms. Results: Forty-four of the 100 articles are reviews. On average, each of the 100 articles had 632 citations and since publication was cited 43 times annually. The four core journals were Journal of Ethnopharmacology (n = 17), Food Chemistry (n = 7), Life Sciences (n = 5), and Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (n = 4). Anti-oxidant effects appeared to be a recurring and highly cited topic, whereas the links into drug discovery and neuropharmacology seemed to be less strong. Numerous medicinal plants and functional foods were the foci of research, and the foci shifted when comparing pre-2000 and post-2000 publications (with the later involving a broader spectrum of plants and foods and a wider range of biological effects). Contributions largely came from Asia, and also from the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, besides Europe. Conclusion: We have identified and analyzed the 100 most-cited articles in ethnopharmacology. Within 50 years the field has gained a profile and while conventionally often linked to "traditional knowledge," drug discovery and some areas of pharmacology, this analysis highlights its emerging importance in the context of disease prevention (food science), but also the development of research driven by the needs and interests of the fast developing economies most notably of Asia.

Taste intensity modulates effective connectivity from the insular cortex to the thalamus in humans.

Evaluation of taste intensity is one of the most important perceptual abilities in our daily life. In contrast with extensive research findings regarding the spatial representation of taste in the insula and thalamus, little is known about how the thalamus and insula communicate and reciprocally influence their activities for processing taste intensity. To examine this neurophysiological relationship, we investigated the modulatory effect of intensity of saltiness on connections in the network processing taste signals in the human brain. These "effective connectivity" relationships refer to the neurophysiological influence (including direction and strength of influence) of one brain region on another. Healthy adults (N=34), including 17 males and 17 females (mean age=21.3years, SD=2.4; mean body mass index (BMI)=20.2kg/m(2), SD=2.1) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging as they tasted three concentrations of sodium chloride solutions. By effective connectivity analysis with dynamic causal modeling, we show that taste intensity enhances top-down signal transmission from the insular cortex to the thalamus. These results are the first to demonstrate the modulatory effect of taste intensity on the taste network in the human brain.