Layered double hydroxides in sustained antibiotic delivery: a bibliometric review

The increase in antibiotic resistance seriously threatens public health, emphasizing the necessity for new approaches to improve antibiotic efficiency and limit the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Among emerging methods, carriers based on Layered Double Hydroxides (LDHs) have garnered attention because of their innate structural and chemical features. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of recent advancements in this domain, identifies key opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, and outlines strategic directions for the future development of LDH-based sustained antibiotic release systems. A total of 217 publications were sourced from Web of Science Core Collection using a combination of keywords related to LDH for sustained antibiotic release. The data was analysed using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix. The study investigates patterns such as citation trends, keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution, three-field plots, and geographical research distribution. Following this investigation, the results demonstrate that China (85 publications) and Italy (25 publications) stand out as key contributors in this field. Applied Clay Science (17 articles), International Journal of Nanomedicine (7 articles), and International Journal of Biological Macromolecules (6 articles) are the most prolific journals. The keyword co-occurrence revealed that “LDH”, “Sustained release”, and “Drug delivery” are significant areas of interest. The analysis also highlights prominent authors, highly cited works, funding sources, and relevance to SDGs, providing valuable insights for future research directions in the field of drug delivery.