Objective: Central nervous system (CNS) infections are clinical entities that can lead to serious sequelae in which early diagnosis/treatment is critical and viruses are among the main causative factors detected. Nucleic acid tests are used as the gold standard in determining CNS infections. In this study, studies from Turkey investigating viral agents from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples by polymerase chain reaction method in the last decade have been evaluated and a bibliometric analysis was conducted.

Method: Two national (Ulakbim, Dergipark) and four international (PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science) databases as well as two national and two international congress abstracts published between 1.1.2010-1.1.2020 were searched.

Results: A total of 12669 CSF samples from 33 studies were included in the analysis. The highest number of publications was identified in Mikrobiyoloji Bulteni (n=4). The highest number of CSF samples was collected in Izmir (n=5566). Ankara, Ege, and Hacettepe Universities conducted the highest number of studies (4 each). The number of studies tends to increase over the years. The arithmetic means of the percentages calculated for enterovirus, herpes simplex virus, human herpesvirus 6, human herpesvirus 7, adenovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, varicella-zoster virus, human parechovirus, and parvovirus B19 were 2.64%, 2.58%, 1.90%, 0.41%, 1.71%, 1.57%, 1.24%, 0.83%, 0.47%, and 0.05%, respectively.

Conclusion: The bibliometric analysis performed, analyzed the status of research studies on the incidence rates of viral CNS infections in Turkey, and the viral factors detected were evaluated. The data obtained will be useful in defining the place of the subject in scientific literature and in comparing with the new and more reliable epidemiological data being in coordination with clinical process where the molecular techniques were used increasingly.