An informetric investigation of the relatedness of opportunistic infections to HIV/AIDS
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Authors
Onyancha, Omwoyo Bosire
Ocholla, Dennis
Issue Date
2005
Type
Article
Language
en
Keywords
Information retrieval; Informetrics; Opportunistic infections; HIV infections; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome; Information theory in research
Alternative Title
Abstract
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.
Description
Access to the full-text of this item is restricted to subscribers. If you have a subscription to this journal you can access this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2005.03.015
Citation
Onyancha, Omwoyo Bosire; Ocholla, Dennis N. (2005) An informetric investigation of the relatedness of opportunistic infections to HIV/AIDS. Information Processing & Management 41(6):1573-1558, Special Issue on Infometrics
Publisher
Elsevier
License
© 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Journal
Volume
Issue
PubMed ID
DOI
ISSN
0306-4573
0306-4573/$
0306-4573/$