Bibliometric Analysis of Breastfeeding Research in the Middle Eastern Arab Countries

摘要

The Middle East is a place where breastfeeding is both culturally recommended and socioeconomically needed. The objective of this article was to quantify the research activity about breastfeeding (BF) in the Middle East over the last 10 years. A PubMed search was conducted using medical subject headings and author affiliation to retrieve research articles published from the Middle East between 2007 and 2017 (inclusive). Middle Eastern countries produced only 5% of the total number of BF research articles in the world, with Turkey and Iran ranking at the top of the list. Among the 15 Arab countries probed, Qatar ranked first in the number of BF publications per million people (PMP) averaging 6.61 PMP, while Yemen ranked 15th with the least number of 0.10 PMP. On the other hand, Iran ranked first with 39.93 BF publications per USD$1000 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, Turkey ranked second with 24.19 publications per USD$1000 GDP per capita, while Bahrain ranked 15th with only 0.44 publications per USD$1000 per GDP per capita. Although the topic poses as both a religious - cultural - recommendation and a socioeconomic necessity, research activity about BF in the Middle East still lags behind developed countries. Greater productivity levels are expected to emerge to accompany the recent significant investment in research in the Arab world in general, and the Gulf countries in particular.