Candida auris (C. auris) is an emerging multi-drug resistant fungus considered as the cause of several nosocomial infections of bad prognosis. Its rapid spread in five continents, resistance to common asepsis measures and high mortality rate (around 60%) became this pathogen fungus in a serious global health challenge. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of global scientific research on C. auris since it was isolated first in 2009. A systematic search was conducted in Scopus databases in the period of 2009-2018 and a total of 227 indexed documents were retrieved. A sharp increase in the number of studies related to drug and multidrug resistance of C. auris during 2016-2018 was observed, coinciding with an increase in the number of first-case and outbreak reports worldwide. The leading countries based on number of publications were United States, India and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, Netherlands ranked first when (i) ratio between the number of citations and number of publications, (ii) ratio between the number of publications and gross domestic product (GDP) and (iii) ratio between number of citations and GDP, were used as indicators of productivity. Areas such as (i) Medicine, (ii) Immunology and Microbiology, and (iii) Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics concentrated the majority of studies related to C. auris based on Scopus reports. Despite the recent emergence of the topic since the first case report in 2009, recent research efforts have allowed identifying Ibrexafungerp (SCY-078) and Rezafungin (CD101) as possible candidates for facing the actual antifungal resistance of C. auris.
Key words: Candida auris; drug resistance, multidrug resistance; emerging pathogen; bibliometric analysis.
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