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. 2022 Aug 11:13:953465.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.953465. eCollection 2022.

Emerging trends and hot spots in autoimmune thyroiditis research from 2000 to 2022: A bibliometric analysis

Qiuxian Li  1 , Wanyu Yang  1 , Jiashu Li  1 , Zhongyan Shan  1
Affiliations

Emerging trends and hot spots in autoimmune thyroiditis research from 2000 to 2022: A bibliometric analysis

Qiuxian Li et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

Background: Autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT) is the most common autoimmune disease, affecting 3-5% patients worldwide. In recent years, approximately 200 articles on AIT have been published annually in various journals. However, to date, no article has systematically assessed the related literature. Therefore, we conducted a bibliometric analysis on AIT to reveal the dynamic scientific developments and help researchers gain a global perspective while exploring the hotspots and development trends.

Methods: AIT-related articles and reviews from 2000 to 2022 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). The following search terms were used to extract document data: TS= (" autoimmune thyroiditi*") OR TI= ("chronic lymphocytic thyroiditi*") OR TI=(hashimoto*) OR TI= ("postpartum thyroiditis"). We selected articles and reviews published in English from 2000 to 2022. Three software programs (VOSviewer, CiteSpace, Pajek) were employed to analyze the contribution and co-occurrence relationships of different references, countries/regions, institutes, journals and also keywords in this field.

Results: This scientometric study included 2290 English papers published in 723 journals with 39661 co-cited references from 561 institutions in 120 countries/regions. Based on the reference and keyword analysis, researchers used to focus on "apoptosis", "insulin resistance", "encephalopathy", "IFN-γ" related to AIT during the past 20 years. However, with the development of other novel directions such as "papillary thyroid cancer" (2018-2022), "Vitamin D" (2016-2022), "oxidative stress" (2018-2022), "polymorphism" (2019-2022) and "association" (2020-2022), researchers are more interested in the relationship between papillary thyroid carcinoma and AIT, the effect of vitamin D supplementation on AIT, the oxidative stress in thyroid disease as well as the influence of polymorphism.

Conclusion: Bibliometric analysis of the outputs of AIT shows an overview of the current status of the research on AIT. The associations between papillary thyroid carcinoma, vitamin D, oxidative stress, polymorphism and AIT are major research frontiers. However, further research and collaboration are still required worldwide. Our findings can help researchers grasp the research status of AIT and quickly determine new directions for future research.

Keywords: CiteSpace; Hashimoto thyroiditis; VOSviewer; autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT); bibliometric analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Knowledge map of references related to AIT research. (B) The co-citation clusters of references related to AIT research. (C) The timeline view of references related to AIT research.
Figure 2
Figure 2
References with the strongest citation bursts related to AIT research. (A) Top 25 references with the strongest citation bursts related to AIT research during the past two decades. (B) Top 10 references with the strongest citation bursts related to AIT research in the past five years.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Trends in the number of publications concerning AIT and analysis of the associated countries/regions.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Analysis of countries/regions engaged in AIT. (A) The top 10 countries devoted to research concerning AIT. (B) The top 10 countries with the strongest citation bursts from 2000 to 2022. (C) The cross-country collaboration visualization map. The lines between nodes represent cooperation between countries. Each node represents a country or region. The size of the node is proportional to the number of documents published. (D) The cross-country collaboration visualization map. The size of the node is proportional to the number of citations.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Analysis of institutions engaged in AIT. (A) The top 10 institutions devoted to research concerning AIT. (B) The top 10 institutions with the strongest citation bursts from 2000 to 2022. (C) The visualization map of collaborations between institutions. The lines between nodes represent cooperation between institutions. Each node represents one institution. The size of the node is proportional to the number of documents published. (D) The visualization map of collaborations between institutions. The size of the node is proportional to the number of citations.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Analysis of journals involved in AIT. (A) The visualization map showing academic journals publishing research related to AIT. Each node represents a journal. The size of the node is proportional to the number of documents published. (B) The visualization map showing academic journals publishing research related to AIT. The size of the node is proportional to the number of citations. (C) The visualization map focused on the total link strength between the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and Thyroid.
Figure 7
Figure 7
A dual-map overlay of journals related to research on AIT.
Figure 8
Figure 8
(A) A network map of keywords. (B) The timeline view of keywords. (C) The keywords with the strongest citation bursts in articles related to AIT research.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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