Results and Discussion Part 1

The aim of our work was to evaluate whether new basic research findings reach clinical testing and how they influence the ongoing efforts to fight biofilms. We also wanted to assess whether clinical trials reflect the main basic research trends.

We retrieved 553 reviews indexed in the past five years in Pubmed.gov and containing the keywords “bacterial infections” or “biofilm” in their title, as described in the section Methods. 65.1% of these publications did not match the inclusion criteria and were excluded from the analysis. As reported in the Table related to inclusion criteria, we focused on comprehensive reviews on bacterial biofilms and related antibiofilm strategies investigated in the biomedical field.

Using the same keywords, we found 969 clinical trials and excluded 19.6% of the results that did not match the inclusion criteria.

The figure below shows the research topics we identified in the studies. Polarization of the results is very sharp: reviews are less focused on specific infections/medical areas, the majority of publications discussing general topics on prevention and eradication tools.