Major depressive disease research in BRICS: A bibliometric analysis of publications from 2003 to 2022.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) seriously threatens human health. BRICS, known as an acronym for "Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa," were also actively carrying out researches on MDD. This study aimed to conduct a bibliometric study of research on MDD conducted by the BRICS. By searching in the Web of Science and using the software Vosviewer and Citespace as analysis tools, this study analyzed the cooperation network at the country, institution, author-specific levels, the research hotspots and trends from BRICS between 2003-2022. A total of 10,911 articles were finally included. Our findings showed that researches on MDD from BRICS rapidly increased during the past two decades. China and India have shown explosive growth, while South Africa has the largest average "Usage Count" and "Time Cited". The current cooperation partners of the BRICS were mainly high-income countries and other developing countries with similar cultures, languages, and geographical locations. Institutions in high-income countries served as the main bridges for BRICS cooperation, while at the author level, some core authors in the BRICS countries serve as centers. China showed a flexible model in domestic partnership, but institutions and authors in the other four countries have gathered to cooperate within the group. BRICS research on MDD mainly focused on cognitive science, brain science, epidemiology, and disease mechanisms. The keywords"gut microbiota", "network analysis," "machine learning" and "sleep quality" showed explosive growth and might become research hotspots in the near future. This bibliometric analysis provided a science knowledge graph and references for other researchers.

The priority areas and possible pathways for health cooperation in BRICS countries.

As one of the largest alliances of middle-income countries, the BRICS, known as an acronym for five countries including "Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa", represents half of the global population. The health cooperation among BRICS countries will benefit their populations and other middle- and low-income countries. This study aims to summarize the current status of health cooperation in BRICS countries and identify opportunities to strengthen BRICS participation in global health governance. A literature review was conducted to analyze the status, progress, and challenges of BRICS' health cooperation. Content analysis was used to review the 2011-2021 annual joint declarations of the BRICS Health Ministers Meetings. The priority health areas were identified through segmental frequency analysis. Our research suggested that communicable diseases, access to medicine, and universal health coverage appeared most frequently in the content of declarations, indicating the possible top health priorities among BRICS' health collaboration. These priority areas align with the primary health challenges of each country, including the threats of double burden of diseases, as well as the need for improving health systems and access to medicines. Respective external cooperation, inter-BRICS health cooperation, and unified external cooperation are the main forms of health cooperation among BRICS countries. However, challenges such as the lack of a unified image and precise position, lack of practical impact, and weak discourse power have impeded the impact of BRICS on health governance. This study suggests that the BRICS countries should recognize their positioning, improve their unified image, and establish cooperative entities; at the same time, they should increase their practical strength, promote non-governmental cooperation, and expand the cooperation space through the "BRICS Plus" mechanism with countries with similar interests to join.