
==== Front
Hum Vaccin Immunother
Hum Vaccin Immunother
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics
2164-5515
2164-554X
Taylor & Francis

39238254
10.1080/21645515.2024.2392334
2392334
Version of Record
Research Article
Public Health & Policy
Global tendency and frontiers of research on pertussis from 2000 to 2023: A bibliometric and visual analysis
H. WANG ET AL.
HUMAN VACCINES & IMMUNOTHERAPEUTICS
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0507-758X
Wang Hao a b
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9308-0674
Liu Xiaoying c
Cao Xin b
Liu Jie b
Li Wei b
a Clinical College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine , Wuhan, China
b Pediatric Respiratory Department, Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Hubei Province , Wuhan, China
c Department of Pediatrics, Hubei Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine , Wuhan, China
CONTACT Xiaoying Liu lxylzj11@163.com Department of Pediatrics, Hubei Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 856, Luoyu Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
5 9 2024
2024
5 9 2024
20 1 2392334Integra04 9 2024
Integra04 9 2024
20 5 2024
22 7 2024
11 8 2024
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
2024
The Author(s)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

ABSTRACT

Pertussis has reemerged globally, with rising incidence in China. Controlling this disease remains a significant public health challenge worldwide. This study applies bibliometric methods to analyze global and Chinese research on pertussis, assessing current trends, identifying hot topics, predicting future research directions, and providing guidance for scientific research and clinical practice. Pertussis-related articles from 2000 to 2023 were retrieved from four major Chinese databases and three English databases. COOC and CiteSpace software were used to analyze publication trends, geographic distribution, institutions, disciplines, and keywords, to visualize through network maps. The study analyzed 2,580 Chinese and 5,311 foreign articles and reviews. Pertussis research publications have increased globally, with foreign research peaking earlier than in China. The United States leads in publication volume, while China showed the highest burst of activity from 2019 to 2023. Research mainly focuses on animal experiments, vaccine development and safety, clinical characteristics and treatment, and pertussis toxin. Pertussis research is thriving globally and in China. Future research should emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration across molecular biology, immunology, and epidemiology to innovate vaccines and control strategies. Additionally, continued development of treatment drugs remains crucial as current vaccines do not fully control pertussis.

KEYWORDS

Pertussis
bibliometrics
visual analysis
hotspots
research trends
CiteSpace
The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.
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pmcIntroduction

Since the 1980s, Japan, the United States, and European countries have successively developed and promoted the use of acellular pertussis vaccines.1 In recent years, there has been a large increase in reported cases of pertussis around the world. Countries with high vaccination coverage, such as the United States and the European Union, have also seen a rise in the incidence rate after pertussis vaccine switch, a phenomenon known as the pertussis resurgence.2 China fully implemented planned immunization in 1978, and the incidence rate has decreased significantly with the widespread use of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine. Since 2007, the national immunization program has expanded, and China has gradually switched from whole-cell pertussis (wP) vaccine to acellular pertussis (aP) vaccine. However, in recent years, the incidence of pertussis in China has shown an increasing trend.3,4

In fact, there is an increase of pertussis in some countries and a decrease in others, while there is often an increase in countries switching to acellular vaccine. At present, the number of publications on pertussis in China and abroad has increased considerably, but relevant bibliometric studies have not been reported. Scientific bibliometrics can quantify published scientific knowledge by mapping its focuses and trends, summarizing the current status and development trends of specific diseases or research fields, and providing ideas and directions for future research.5 This study used bibliometric methods to analyze relevant literature on pertussis research; analyzed the distribution of publication times, countries and regions, institutions, discipline classification and keywords; and visualized the findings through network maps to show the current research status and research hotspots, predict future research directions and provide guidance for future scientific research and clinical practice.

Materials and methods

Sources of the data and search strategy

The China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, VIP Database (VIP), and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) were used as data sources for the Chinese literature. The Web of Science (WOS), PubMed, and Embase databases were used as data sources for the literature from the rest of the world.

The Chinese literature was searched with “pertussis” as the key word, the language type was limited to Chinese, the literature type was articles and reviews, and the time span was January 1, 2000, to November 20, 2023.

The foreign literature was searched using the subject words “whooping cough” and “pertussis.” The language type was limited to “non-Chinese,” and the literature type was limited to articles and reviews, with a time span of January 1, 2000, to November 20, 2023.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The inclusion criteria were as follows: the authors screened studies for relevance by reading the titles and abstracts of literature on the subject of pertussis, including clinical studies, experimental studies, reviews, case reports, etc. Studies with incomplete bibliographic information, conference papers, popular science articles, abstracts, translations, lectures, newsletters and newspapers, etc., were excluded. For studies published more than once, the version with the earliest publication date was selected.

Application software

This study used CO-occurrence software (v. 14.9) and CiteSpace (v. 6.2. R7) software for data processing and visual analysis. Due to the different formats of bibliographic data in different databases, CiteSpace software cannot combine and deduplicate data from multiple databases for comprehensive summary analysis. Therefore, COOC software was used to extract, deduplicate, clean and standardize the bibliographic data from multiple databases.

Data cleaning

We established a literature database and used COOC software combined with Excel to clean the data, including removing duplicate documents, standardizing keywords, institutions, and country names, merging synonyms, and removing meaningless words. After the data were cleaned, the processed bibliographic data were converted into a.txt file in Refworks format through COOC software and then imported into CiteSpace software for format conversion and data analysis.

Data analysis

CiteSpace software was used to conduct visual analysis and construct knowledge maps. This study used CiteSpace (v. 6.2. R7) with the following parameters: time range (time slicing): January 2000 to December 2023; time slicing: 1 year/stage; node types: country, institution, references, category, and keywords. Selection criteria were as follows: institution, country, category, and references are all set with g-index (k = 25), keyword setting-threshold (top N% per slice) = 10, LRF = 3.0, L/N = 10, LBY = 5, e = 1.0, pruning= pathfinder + pruning sliced networks. For hot word burst analysis, γ was set as [0, 1] to 1, and the remaining values were default values. In the hot word burst time graph, line colors indicate the popularity of words that pop up over a period of time, with red indicating burst, blue indicating presence, and light blue indicating absence. According to the parameter settings of each node, a visual graph analysis was performed on the country and keywords of the study, as well as the institution, references and category of literature in the WOS database. The size of nodes indicates the number of publications. The links between nodes show the collaboration relationships, with thicker lines indicating closer connections. The node centrality can reflect the influence and intermediary connection degree in the visual knowledge maps.6 Nodes with centrality ≥0.1 are considered as key nodes and marked with purple rings on the periphery.7

Results

Search results

A total of 7891 relevant studies were retrieved from the Chinese database, including 1979 articles from CNKI, 2949 articles from Wanfang, 1886 articles from VIP, and 1077 articles from CBM. The retrieved literature was imported into COOC (v. 14.9) and screened according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and 2580 Chinese studies were ultimately included.

A total of 12,562 relevant studies were retrieved from the three major English-language databases, including 5,662 from the WOS database, 3,888 from PubMed, and 3,012 from the Embase database. COOC software was used to screen the studies according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and 5,311 foreign-language studies, including 2168 from WOS, 866 from PubMed, and 2277 from Embase, were ultimately included. There are 201 articles independently published by Chinese authors in foreign literature.

Growth trends of publications

Since 2000, the annual number of publications on pertussis-related research in China and abroad has generally shown an upward trend (Figures 1 and 2). Figure 1 shows that there are 5110 foreign studies and 2 peak periods. The first small peak period is from 2005 to 2007, the second peak period is from 2014 to 2022, and the number of publications has been at a high level for a long time. The number of articles published was the highest in 2019 (445 articles). The 201 articles published by Chinese authors in foreign literature were combined with those from the Chinese literature, totaling 2,781 articles (Figure 2). There was a peak period in China from 2018 to 2022, with the highest number of publications in 2020 (205 articles), but the number of publications remained relatively stable for a long time before 2018. The publication rate is witnessing a downward trend from 2022 to 2023, both in China and foreign countries, possibly attributed to the temporary decrease caused by the pandemic. Figure 1. Time distribution of pertussis-related literature in foreign countries.

Figure 2. Time distribution of pertussis-related literature in China.

Distribution of countries

By analyzing the geographical distribution characteristics of pertussis-related research papers, we can understand the global prevalence and regional distribution of pertussis. The country cooperation network analysis included 126 nodes and 791 edges, and the network density was 0.1004 (Figure 3). Figure 3 shows that the United States published the most articles, with 1,498 articles published, which is much greater than that of other countries. The top 10 countries with the most publications are shown in Table 1, with the USA followed by France, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, China, Canada, Italy, and Spain, indicating that these countries apply greater research attention to and investment in pertussis. The centrality values for the USA (0.24), France (0.22), the UK (0.14), and Switzerland (0.15) are all greater than 0.1, indicating that there is more cooperation between the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and other countries and that these countries hold key positions in the network of national cooperation. Figure 3. Country cooperation network map.

Table 1. Top 10 countries by number of publications in pertussis research.

Rank	Country	Number of publications	Centrality	
1	USA	1498	0.24	
2	France	483	0.22	
3	UK	408	0.14	
4	Netherlands	352	0.03	
5	Australia	343	0.07	
6	Belgium	303	0.07	
7	China	287	0.04	
8	Canada	280	0.06	
9	Italy	251	0.02	
10	Spain	237	0.04	

By analyzing the burst time of the number of country publications, we can infer the research intensity and outbreak time of pertussis in the corresponding country. As shown in Figure 4, China has the highest degree of burst (burst degree: 32.81), and the burst time is from 2019 to 2023. European countries such as Germany, Bulgaria, Sweden, and the United Kingdom began to exhibit a publication burst from 2000 to 2002. The publication bursts in South Africa, Peru, New Zealand, China and other countries only began after 2015, a lag of more than 10 years following those in Europe. Figure 4. Distribution of research heat and burst time of pertussis research in different countries.

Distribution of institution

Based on data from 2168 studies from the WOS database, we analyzed the cooperation network of institutions. In the cooperative network map of research institutions, the number of nodes is 373, with 1955 edges, and the network density is 0.0282 (Figure 5). The three institutions with the largest number of publications are vaccine research and development institutions, and there are more scientific research institutions in France than in other countries. The institution with the largest number of publications is the Institut International Pasteur, with 121 publications, followed by GlaxoSmithKline, with 112 publications. In terms of centrality, institutions with node intermediary centrality >0.1 include GlaxoSmithKline (112 articles, centrality 0.16), the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment of the Netherlands (75 articles, centrality 0.11), and Vanderbilt University in the United States (17 articles, centrality 0.11). Although Vanderbilt University published only 17 articles, its centrality is relatively high, indicating that Vanderbilt University occupies an important position in the institutional cooperation network and cooperates closely with other institutions. Figure 5. Cooperation network map of pertussis-related research institutions.

Analysis of discipline classification

WOS data were applied to analyze subject categories, and the results showed that pertussis research involved a total of 102 disciplines. The top 10 disciplines with the highest frequency of occurrence are shown in Table 2. The most frequently appearing discipline is IMMUNOLOGY (1017 times, centrality 0.30), followed by INFECTIOUS DISEASES (539 times, centrality 0.06), MEDICINE, RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTAL (452 times, centrality 0.12), MICROBIOLOGY (382 times, centrality 0.04), and PEDIATRICS (210 times, centrality 0.10).Table 2. Distribution of disciplines related to pertussis (top 10).

Rank	Discipline	Number of publications	Centrality	
1	IMMUNOLOGY	1017	0.30	
2	INFECTIOUS DISEASES	539	0.06	
3	MEDICINE, RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTAL	452	0.12	
4	MICROBIOLOGY	382	0.04	
5	PEDIATRICS	210	0.10	
6	BIOTECHNOLOGY & APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY	174	0.22	
7	PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH	169	0.33	
8	MEDICINE, GENERAL & INTERNAL	95	0.02	
9	PHARMACOLOGY & PHARMACY	82	0.29	
10	BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY	77	0.18	

Analysis of the document cocitation network

The 2168 WOS articles included a total of 829 cited references and 8 articles with a reference frequency greater than 100, as shown in Table 3. The most frequently cited reference is Warfel (2014),8 which has been cited 160 times. This study used baboons as the research subjects. The results showed that previously infected animals and animals vaccinated with the wP vaccine had strong Bordetella pertussis-specific Th17 cell memory and Th1 cell memory, whereas aP vaccination instead induced Th1/Th2 responses. The observation that aP vaccine-induced immune responses do not match those induced by natural infection and fail to prevent colonization or transmission provides a plausible explanation for the resurgence of pertussis and suggests that optimal control of pertussis requires the development of improved vaccines.8 Table 3. Top 8 cocited references related to pertussis in the WOS from 2000 to 2023.

Rank	Cocited literature	Author (year)	Journal	Frequency	
1	Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate model	Warfel (2014)8	Proc Natl Acad Sci USA	160	
2	Effectiveness of maternal pertussis vaccination in England: an observational study	Amirthalingam (2014)9	LANCET	142	
3	An update of the global burden of pertussis in children younger than 5 years: a modelling study	Yeung (2017)10	LANCET INFECT DIS	125	
4	A case-control study to estimate the effectiveness of maternal pertussis vaccination in protecting newborn infants in England and Wales, 2012–2013	Dabrera (2015)11	CLIN INFECT DIS	116	
5	Updated Recommendations for Use of Tetanus Toxoid, Reduced Diphtheria Toxoid, and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine (Tdap) in Pregnant Women-Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), 2012	Sawyer (2013)12	MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep	112	
6	Safety and immunogenicity of tetanus diphtheria and acellular pertussis (Tdap) immunization during pregnancy in mothers and infants: a randomized clinical trial	Munoz (2014)13	JAMA	110	
7	Epidemic pertussis in 2012-the resurgence of a vaccine-preventable disease	Cherry (2012)14	NEW ENGL J MED	110	
8	Waning protection after fifth dose of acellular pertussis vaccine in children	Klein (2012)15	NEW ENGL J MED	105	

Analysis of keywords

Co-occurrence analysis of keywords

The co-occurrence network analysis of keywords for pertussis resulted in a network graph containing 424 nodes, 1425 edges, and a network density of 0.0159, based on 5,311 foreign-language studies, as shown in Figure 6. The 30 most frequent keywords are shown in Table 4. Analysis of the mediation centrality revealed that the top 10 keywords were “immunogenicity,” “fever,” “clinical article,” “hemagglutinin,” “IgG antibody,” “influenza,” “immune response,” “erythromycin,” “unclassified drug,” and “pertactin.” Among them, “immunogenicity” (284), “fever” (171), “clinical article” (154), and “hemagglutinin” (114) had the highest intermediary centrality, with values of 0.09. These keywords occupy an important position in the network of pertussis research hotspots and are most closely related to other keywords. Figure 6. Co-occurrence network map of pertussis-related keywords.

Table 4. High-frequency keywords related to pertussis (top 30).

Rank	keywords	Year	Frequency	Centrality	
1	pertussis	2000	3528	0.05	
2	human	2000	1982	0.06	
3	bordetella pertussis	2000	1775	0.02	
4	vaccination	2000	1356	0	
5	pertussis vaccine	2000	1163	0.01	
6	female	2000	928	0.02	
7	controlled study	2000	902	0.04	
8	infant	2000	827	0.01	
9	child	2000	785	0.02	
10	major clinical study	2000	739	0.03	
11	male	2000	730	0.02	
12	dpt vaccine	2000	655	0.03	
13	adult	2000	632	0.04	
14	immunization	2000	598	0.03	
15	nonhuman	2000	571	0.03	
16	polymerase chain reaction	2000	552	0.06	
17	epidemic	2000	518	0.03	
18	pertussis toxin	2000	499	0.03	
19	adolescent	2000	495	0.03	
20	whooping cough	2013	436	0	
21	vaccine	2000	431	0.02	
22	pregnancy	2011	406	0.03	
23	incidence	2000	395	0.05	
24	diphtheria	2000	387	0.01	
25	tetanus	2000	376	0.03	
26	coughing	2000	359	0.05	
27	dtap vaccine	2006	346	0.01	
28	IgG antibody	2000	322	0.08	
29	immunogenicity	2000	284	0.09	
30	drug efficacy	2000	282	0.06	

Analysis of keyword clusters

The timeline of keyword cluster analysis is shown in Figure 7. The results show that the modularity is Q = 0.5204 > 0.3 and the weighted mean silhouette is S = 0.8422 > 0.7, indicating that the clustering structure is significant and that the clustering results have high credibility. The keywords formed 8 cluster labels, including #0 mouse, #1 tetanus, #2 case report, #3 nonhuman, #4 IgG antibody, #5 DTaP vaccine, #6 acellular pertussis vaccine, and #7 adenylate cyclase toxin. According to the keyword clustering and main group information, there are four main research directions for pertussis: “animal experiment” (#0, #3), “vaccine development, clinical trial and safety” (#1, #5, #6), “clinical characteristics and treatment” (#0, #2), and “pertussis toxin” (#7). Figure 7. Timeline graph of pertussis-related keyword clusters.

Analysis of keyword bursts

The results of the analysis of the research popularity and burst time of pertussis-related keywords (top 25) are shown in Figure 8. As shown in the figure, from 2000 to 2023, keywords related to the pertussis vaccine, such as “infanrix” vaccine, “boostrix” vaccine, “adacel” vaccine, “acellular vaccine” and “clinical trial,” burst earlier. The burst time of the “clinical trial” was from 2000 to 2010, and the time period was long, suggesting that clinical trial research on the pertussis vaccine was popular over these 10 years. The burst time of “school child” was from 2009 to 2014, and that of “preschool child” ranged from 2009 to 2013, suggesting that pertussis was common among children during this period. The burst time of “maternal immunization” started in 2016 and did not end in 2023—a period of 7 years. “Pregnancy” started in 2018 but did not stop in 2023, suggesting that pregnant women have been a well-studied research group related to pertussis in recent years, and research on improving the immunity of fetuses and infants against pertussis through maternal immunity is popular. Figure 8. Graph of burst times for keywords related to pertussis research (top 25).

Discussion

This study conducted a comprehensive bibliometric and visual analysis of pertussis research literature by using COOC and CiteSpace software, revealed the development trends and frontiers in the field of pertussis research, and provided new perspectives and guidance for future research directions.

Global research trends

The number of global publications on pertussis has shown an increasing trend annually, especially in the context of adjustments to vaccination strategies and the resurgence of pertussis epidemics. This trend reflects the continued focus of the global scientific community on pertussis control and prevention. International research cooperation is mainly concentrated in high-income countries, such as the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, which have made the most substantial contributions to the field of pertussis research. This impact may be related to these countries’ relatively high research funding investment, strong scientific research institutions, and rich research experience. However, low- and middle-income countries need more attention. A study using predictive models to estimate pertussis cases and deaths showed that Africa accounted for the largest proportion of pertussis cases in children under 5 years of age in 2014 (7.8 million [33%] cases and 92,500 [58%] deaths).10 Future research must pay more attention to vaccination strategies and effectiveness evaluations in low- and middle-income countries.

Research hotspots and frontiers

Through keyword analysis and keyword clustering, we found that the hotspots and frontiers of pertussis research mainly focus on vaccine development and evaluation, optimization of vaccination strategies, epidemiological characteristics of pertussis, and rapid diagnostic technology.

The development and evaluation of the aP vaccine has become a focus of research in recent years. Although the introduction of acellular vaccines has greatly improved vaccine safety, the resurgence of pertussis cases in recent years prompts the need for a reevaluation of existing vaccine strategies. Compared with wP vaccine, the aP vaccine has fewer side effects, but it cannot provide long-term protection, leading to an increase in the incidence of infections in adolescents and adults, and it cannot effectively prevent the spread of pertussis among the population.16 Animal experimental studies have shown that aP vaccine can provide effective protection in the short term, but its long-term protective efficacy is insufficient, as it fails to prevent colonization or transmission, and aP vaccine leads to key differences in T-cell immune response.8 This discovery has triggered widespread interest in research on vaccine improvement, new vaccine formulations, and vaccination strategies, such as the application of booster doses and the development of novel adjuvants.

Research on the epidemiological characteristics of pertussis can help in analyzes of regional differences and age distribution characteristics of the epidemic, and monitoring research on the genetic variation of Bordetella pertussis can help evaluate the protective efficacy of existing vaccines. In recent years, the genetic variability of Bordetella pertussis has attracted considerable attention from researchers. Although vaccination has significantly reduced the incidence of pertussis, an increase in pertussis cases has been reported in many places around the world in recent years. This phenomenon is related not only to the decrease in the protective efficacy of vaccines but may also to factors such as pathogen mutations. Therefore, strengthening the study of the epidemiological characteristics of pertussis and the study of the genetic variability of Bordetella pertussis, especially epidemic surveillance in different age groups, is crucial for optimizing prevention and control strategies and guiding the adjustment of vaccine ingredients.

Population studies have shown that infants and children are the focus of clinical research on pertussis, and the amount of research on this topic is high. Pregnant women have also been a focus of attention in recent years. Data from one study showed that an estimated 5.1 million (21%) pertussis cases and 85,900 (53%) deaths occurred in infants under 1 year of age in 2014.10 Improving the immunity of fetuses and infants against pertussis through maternal immunity is also an important direction of current research. Studying vaccination strategies for different age groups and special groups (such as pregnant women, newborns, and elderly individuals) to improve vaccination rates and immune effects is crucial for reducing the occurrence of severe cases and deaths.

The rapid and accurate diagnosis of pertussis is highly important for epidemic control, prevention of spread and patient treatment. With the development of molecular biology, diagnostic methods based on multiplex PCR technology have improved the sensitivity and specificity of pertussis diagnosis. Due to the high sensitivity and specificity of PCR detection technology, it has become an important means for the effective diagnosis of pertussis. Future research should focus on further improving the convenience and acceptability of diagnostic technologies so that they can be more widely used under low-resource conditions, especially in developing countries.

An analysis of the distribution of disciplines revealed that research on pertussis involves multiple disciplines, including immunology, infectious diseases, microbiology and other disciplines, indicating that this research is an interdisciplinary field. Conducting research with an interdisciplinary approach can help researchers gain a deeper understanding of pertussis from different perspectives, thereby promoting the development and improvement of innovative treatments and prevention strategies. Therefore, interdisciplinary research methods, including those used in these disciplines, should be fully utilized when conducting research on pertussis. In addition, we cannot neglect the treatment of pertussis. It has been reported that macrolide-resistant pertussis strains are becoming increasingly prevalent in China.17 The resistance rate of Bordetella pertussis to macrolide antibiotics such as erythromycin can reach approximately 90%.18 Therefore, some scholars believe that it is very important to find alternative drugs for macrolide-resistant pertussis strains.19,20 By consulting the data in the Chinese databases, we found that there are many case-control studies and case series studies on the treatment of pertussis with traditional Chinese medicine. Therefore, we believe that under the current situation where the pertussis vaccine cannot completely control pertussis, it is still necessary to pay attention to the research and development of pertussis treatment drugs. Traditional Chinese medicine is an option with considerable development potential.

Strengths and limitations

This study is the first bibliometric analysis of pertussis research literature since 2000. The relevant data were obtained from four major Chinese databases (CNKI, Wanfang Data, VIP, and CBM) and three major English databases (Web of Science, PubMed, and Embase), and the data volume was large and comprehensive. Other limitations should be noted. Due to the limitations of CiteSpace software in processing bibliographic data from different databases, it is unable to merge and deduplicate data from multiple databases and then perform summary analysis. Therefore, CO-occurrence software was applied to extract, deduplicate, clean and standardize data from multiple databases to ensure the accuracy of the data.

However, despite these advantages, some limitations should be noted in our study. Due to the different bibliographic data formats in different databases, only the WOS data were used for institutional analysis, discipline analysis, and reference analysis. The amount of data included in the WOS database (2168 records) is large enough, and the robustness of the analysis results is correspondingly stable. In addition, due to the different languages of the Chinese and English databases and the large number of keywords, the keyword analysis data were obtained from three major English databases. However, the amount of these data is sufficient to show the research trends and frontiers of pertussis.

Conclusions

This study not only provides valuable information for understanding the current status and trends of pertussis research but also provides constructive suggestions for future research directions and strategies. In summary, research on pertussis in China and abroad is flourishing. The hotspots and frontier areas of research focus on vaccine development and evaluation, optimization of vaccination strategies, epidemiological characteristics of pertussis and the development of rapid diagnostic technology. Future research requires interdisciplinary collaboration, combining knowledge from multiple fields such as molecular biology, immunology, and epidemiology to develop new vaccines and control strategies. In addition, under the current situation where the pertussis vaccine cannot completely control pertussis, it is still necessary to pay attention to the research and development of pertussis treatment drugs.

Acknowledgments

We thank all the authors whose research was included in this study.

Xiaoying Liu is a chief physician at Hubei Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a professor at Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, and a doctoral supervisor. She was the leader of the key discipline of Traditional Chinese Medicine Pediatrics in Hubei Province and a member of the Pediatric Branch of the Chinese Association of Higher Education in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

HW did this bibliometrics analysis and drafted manuscript. JL and WL organized the manuscript writing. XC searched strategy. XL provided supervision and conducted the review. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Data availability statement

All the data generated or analyzed are included in this article.
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