GLOBAL RESEARCH TRENDS OF REASSORTANT: THE EVOLUTION PROCESS OF SEGMENTED RNA VIRUS AND ITS IMPACT TO THE GLOBAL HEALTH RESEARCH

Abstract

Reassortment is the process of segmented RNA virus to evolve by exchange their genome in co-infection condition. The novel virus progeny may have higher pathogenicity, virulency and transmission when compared with their ancestor. Since reassortant viruses have been reported to be the cause of the four influenza pandemics, reassortant viruses began to become the focus of research.  However, the reassortant process is not always associated with negative outputs. Several reassortant viruses have also become the focus of research in vaccine development. In this study, bibliometric approach was conducted to analyze the research trends on reassortment following the PRISMA guidelines. The Scopus database was used as the data source for this study and the the network visualization map based on index and author keywordas was build using VOSviewer software and Biblioshiny based on the R program. The result show that the trend in studies related to reassortant viruses tends to increase from year to year, although a decline began to occur in 2021-mid 2023. The United States being the country with the highest publications. In line with this, the affiliation of the top author, the most productive journal, and the most cited publication is also from the United States. Index keywords and author keywords are dominated by the words reassortment, influenza virus, rotavirus, vaccines, articles, humans, and animals. Considering that reassortment continues to occur today, it is predicted that research related to reassortant viruses will continue to be carried out in the future. Future research may need to be conducted using more comprehensive data in multiple databases and research focus areas. It is also possible to use other software that has different algorithms and models to get more precise output data.