A brief examination of literature on adult cystic fibrosis: An emerging topic

Cystic fibrosis (CF), a historically fatal childhood disease, now became a manageable adulthood disease. The transition of the disease to adulthood and the patients to adult physicians raised a new question: What is the extent of adult physicians' contributions to CF literature? We examined the data of all CF publications from Web of Sciences between 1945 and 2023. We determined the adult CF articles by searching for the term "adult" in titles. We analyzed the data in terms of publication years, study types, countries, and languages. A total of 30,944 articles examined. From 1945 to 2023, both the number of published articles (88-10,460), and the number of publishing journals (31-1770) on CF have increased. The number of articles on adult CF has also increased, from only 3 in the first 3 decades up to 716 between 2010 and 2019. While pediatrics was initially the leading journal with the highest number of articles published on CF, general medicine journals, and finally the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis became the leading publisher. The USA were the most productive country on behalf of publication on CF. The increasing number of annual publications clearly shows the growing interest in CF. The increase in the number of articles on adult CF along with the increase in publishing journals provide evidence that the disease is now acknowledged as a disease concerning adults.