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Review
. 2022 Jan 14;19(2):893.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19020893.

Climate Change and Zoonoses: A Review of Concepts, Definitions, and Bibliometrics

Affiliations
Review

Climate Change and Zoonoses: A Review of Concepts, Definitions, and Bibliometrics

Walter Leal Filho et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Climate change can have a complex impact that also influences human and animal health. For example, climate change alters the conditions for pathogens and vectors of zoonotic diseases. Signs of this are the increasing spread of the West Nile and Usutu viruses and the establishment of new vector species, such as specific mosquito and tick species, in Europe and other parts of the world. With these changes come new challenges for maintaining human and animal health. This paper reports on an analysis of the literature focused on a bibliometric analysis of the Scopus database and VOSviewer software for creating visualization maps which identifies the zoonotic health risks for humans and animals caused by climate change. The sources retained for the analysis totaled 428 and different thresholds (N) were established for each item varying from N 5 to 10. The main findings are as follows: First, published documents increased in 2009-2015 peaking in 2020. Second, the primary sources have changed since 2018, partly attributable to the increase in human health concerns due to human-to-human transmission. Third, the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, Italy, and Germany perform most zoonosis research. For instance, sixty documents and only 17 countries analyzed for co-authorship analysis met the threshold led by the USA; the top four author keywords were "climate change", "zoonosis", "epidemiology", and "one health;" the USA, the UK, Germany, and Spain led the link strength (inter-collaboration); the author keywords showed that 37 out of the 1023 keywords met the threshold, and the authors' keyword's largest node of the bibliometric map contains the following: infectious diseases, emerging diseases, disease ecology, one health, surveillance, transmission, and wildlife. Finally, zoonotic diseases, which were documented in the literature in the past, have evolved, especially during the years 2010-2015, as evidenced by the sharp augmentation of publications addressing ad-hoc events and peaking in 2020 with the COVID-19 outbreak.

Keywords: animals; bibliometric analysis; climate change; health hazards; humans; zoonosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Classification of zoonoses according to their etiological agents (main groups).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Classification of zoonoses according to the direction of infection.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Steps followed in our research study.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Documents by year.
Figure 5
Figure 5
VOSviewer visualization of co-authorship by countries.
Figure 6
Figure 6
VOSviewer visualization of author keywords.
Figure 7
Figure 7
VOSviewer visualization of index keywords.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Bibliometric map of the association of countries.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Author keywords.

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