Bibliometric analysis of biomedical publications on SSRI during 1980-2000

We performed a bibliometric study of the scientific publications referring to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The database used was EMBASE: Psychiatry. We applied the principal bibliometric indicators: Price's and Bradford's laws on the increase or dispersion of scientific literature, Lotka's law on the productivity of authors, the participation index (PaI) of countries, the productivity index (PI) of authors, and the collaboration index. By means of manual coding, documents were classified according to type of study and to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) or nonpsychiatric categories. We analysed 3,622 original documents published between 1980 and 2000. Our results show nonfulfilment of Price's law because production on SSRIs does not grow exponentially (r=0.937 vs. r = 0.946, after linear adjustment). The journal most employed is the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Bradford's first zone). The United States is the most productive country (PaI=41.50). The documents were distributed in four groups: experimental pharmacology (8.38%), tolerance and safety (34.94%), clinical efficacy (49.11%), and not specified (7.56%). The drug most studied was fluoxetine (1,745 articles), followed by paroxetine (659). The DSM-IV diagnostic categories most studied were depression (834), obsessive-compulsive disorder (171), and panic disorder (75). The control antidepressants most used in comparative clinical studies were amitriptyline (51) and imipramine (42). The results of the present study show that the SSRIs are not solely antidepressant drugs, but also have a wide range of uses both within the psychiatric sphere (especially in the field of anxiety) and outside it, which explains the considerable scientific production generated in relation to these drugs.