ITQB Researcher leads international publication ranking

According to the analysis performed this March by Science Watch, Hermínia de Lencastre, full professor at ITQB, is the scientist with more articles published worldwide on the topic of antibiotic resistance in the last ten years. With 71 papers on Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Hermínia de Lencastre leads the scientific production ranking in this area among 18,673 international authors. Furthermore, those papers have been cited 1,887 times making Hermínia de Lencastre, head of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory, the fourth most cited author in this study. The list of specialists on MRSA with high number of papers also includes (on the 3rd position) Alexander Tomasz, invited full professor at ITQB.

The study also shows that UNL ranks #3 for scientific production and #9 in citation number in the world list of institutions working on MRSA.

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains are the leading cause of hospital infections and represent a major public health problem. One of the main goals of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at ITQB is the study of the mechanism of ß-lactam antibiotic resistance mediated by the mecA gene.

The Science Watch ranking on MRSA contained 6 095 articles published in 914 scientific journals between 1997 and 31st October 2007, involving 109 countries and 4 580 institutions.

The Special Topics section of ScienceWatch.com is designed to complement Essential Science IndicatorsSM from Thomson Scientific in providing citation analyses and commentary for selected scientific research areas that have experienced notable recent advances or are of special current interest.