Progressive multiple sclerosis: A bibliometric analysis

Background: Progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic immune-mediated disease with a poorly understood pathophysiology. This bibliometric analysis of the literature aims to gain an overview of the current state of research on progressive MS. Methods: The Scopus database was searched using the terms "progressive" and "multiple sclerosis" in the title. The search was done till the 7th of January 2023. We analyzed annual trends, countries, institutions, authors, journals, articles, and keywords based primarily on the citation count. Results: One thousand nine hundred ninety-one studies out of 1993 search results were included. The included studies had 65,788 citations with a mean of 33 citations per study. Most studies were published between the years 2016 and 2020 (n = 607) with a mean number of 20 citations. The United States of America had the highest number of publications (n = 547) and citations (n = 24,921). The top 3 authors were Thompson A.J., Miller D.H., and Filippi M., and Multiple Sclerosis Journal had the most publications (n = 227) and citations (n = 6849). Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric study to address the topic of progressive MS in particular and potentially emphasize the direction of progressive MS research.