Objective: Delusional parasitosis, delusional infestation or Ekbom syndrome is a psychiatric disorder in which people have fixed beliefs that they are infected with a parasite and accompanied by complaints of itching, rash and stinging that continue for at least six months. In our study, we aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of studies on delusional parasitosis indexed in Web of Science (WOS) between 1946 and 2024.

Methods: Analysis of studies indexed in WOS on delusional parasitosis was performed using version 1.6.20 of the VOSviewer program. Images were created with WOS and VOSviewer programs.

Results: A total of 787 publications were detected between the specified dates. The year with the most publications was 2019 with 41 publications. The three most published authors were Anthony Bewley, Peter Lepping and Roland Wolfgang Freudenmann. The USA ranked first with 198 publications (25.16%), followed by the UK (14.10%) and Germany (8.64%). Turkey ranked 14th with 16 publications (2.03%). The USA (30.36%) ranked first in terms of citations, followed by Germany (20.78%) and Wales (14.39%). Most of the publications were from dermatology and psychiatry departments.

Conclusion: Patients with delusional parasitosis apply to many departments such as dermatology, psychiatry, family or internal medicine, microbiology/parasitology. It is very difficult to convince the patient of the psychological dimension of the disease and treatment. We think that it is very important for dermatology, psychiatry and microbiology/parasitology specialists to work as a team in the diagnosis and follow-up of patients, and to conduct multidisciplinary studies to provide detailed epidemiological data about the disease.