An informetric investigation of the relatedness of opportunistic infections to HIV/AIDS

This work presents preliminary findings of a broader content analysis study of the AIDS literature as published and reflected in key bibliographic databases. Specifically, this study focuses on the relatedness of the AIDS-defining diseases in persons with documented HIV infection—otherwise known as Opportunistic Infections (OIs)—to HIV/AIDS by measuring their strengths of association. Ultimately, the project aims at assisting researchers and other stakeholders to identify new research areas and the linkages among these areas in HIV/AIDS research and assist policy makers to map the dynamics of HIV/AIDS research in order to do research planning and formulate appropriate policies. Among many other objectives, the current study sought to test the hypothesis that, through the analysis of published articles, one could show the disease–gene relationship. Documents related to OIs and HIV/AIDS were retrieved and downloaded from the MEDLINE database. The co-word analysis algorithm was used to calculate the strength S of association between the descriptors (i.e. the OIs and HIV/AIDS). The findings of this study correlate with the general observation by medical practitioners as regards the common OIs in AIDS patients. Those infections that are said to be the most common in HIV-infected persons exhibited stronger associations than the less common infections. The strength of association was highest with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) while it was lowest with Shigella. Whereas the association between the diseases and HIV/AIDS has weakened over the last two decades, relatively, there has been continued growth of literature, both on HIV/AIDS and OIs. Finally, this study strongly demonstrates the use of informetrics techniques in assessing the relatedness of a disease to the pathogens that are associated with it. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.