Global research on syndemics: a meta-knowledge analysis (2001-2020)

<ns3:p>Background: Syndemics or synergies of cooccurring epidemics are widely studied across health and social sciences in recent years.</ns3:p> <ns3:p>Methods: We conducted a meta-knowledge analysis of articles published between 2001 to 2020 in this growing field of academic scholarship.</ns3:p> <ns3:p>Results: We found a total of 830 articles authored by 3025 authors, mostly from high-income countries. Publications on syndemics are gradually increasing since 2003, with rapid development in 2013. Each article was cited more than 15 times on average, and most (n = 604) articles were original studies. Syndemics research focused on several areas, including HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, mental health, gender minority stressors, racism, violence, chronic physical and mental disorders, food insecurity, social determinants of health, and coronavirus disease 2019. Moreover, biopsychosocial…