Bibliometric study of original articles on anemia in the Peruvian population in Scopus

Introduction: Anemia constitutes a latent public health problem, mainly caused by iron deficiency. It is important to perform studies in each region that allow describing and formulating interventions to reduce the prevalence of anemia, as well as studies that evaluate the scientific production of anemia to understand the state of the art and propose strategies to direct research towards what the country requires. Objective: Describe the scientific production of anemia in the Peruvian population in the period 2000-2019. Methods: Bibliometric study. A systematic search was carried out in Scopus and the original articles that had anemia among their main variables were selected. Characteristics of each study were manually extracted and descriptively analyzed. Results: 85 articles were found, of which 18 (21.2 %) were published in the Revista Peruana de Medicina Experimental y Salud Pública and 54 (63.5 %) reported receiving funding. In 51 (60.0 %) studies, the corresponding author had Peruvian affiliation and in 76 (89.4 %) articles, at least one author had Peruvian affiliation, mostly from Lima, with the participation of authors from 12 Peruvian regions. Regarding the design, 63 (74.1 %) were observational studies, of which prevalence and associated factors were mainly evaluated, while only 19 (22.3 %) studies evaluated interventions. In respect of the population studied, 55 (64.7 %) were made in the community and 44 articles (51.8 %) studied children up to 2 years of age. Conclusions: Peruvian scientific production on anemia in Scopus is limited, with the important participation of Peruvian researchers as the correspondent author and with international funding. Most of the studies are observational and there are few intervention studies. Efforts are required to increase this scientific production, decentralize it, and guide it to address interventions in public health.