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Review
. 2023 Mar 21:16:1025-1038.
doi: 10.2147/JPR.S401875. eCollection 2023.

Research Trends of Acupuncture Therapy on Myofascial Pain Syndrome from 2000 to 2022: A Bibliometric Analysis

Fengyan Lu #  1   2 , Peizhong Ren #  3 , Quanai Zhang  1   2 , Xiaomei Shao  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Research Trends of Acupuncture Therapy on Myofascial Pain Syndrome from 2000 to 2022: A Bibliometric Analysis

Fengyan Lu et al. J Pain Res. .

Abstract

Background: Acupuncture has been widely used to relieve myofascial pain syndromes (MPS) in many countries. However, the bibliometric analysis of the global application of acupuncture for MPS remains unknown.

Purpose: The present study aims to evaluate the research trends and hot spots of acupuncture for MPS.

Methods: Literatures about acupuncture for MPS from 2000 to 2022 were obtained from the Web of Science. CiteSpace (6.1.R3) was used to analyze the number of publications, countries, institutions, authors, cited journals, cited authors, cited references and keywords.

Results: A total of 403 records were included in the final analysis. The total number of publications increased but with some fluctuations. The Pain was the most cited journals. The most productive country and institution were USA, and China Medicine University, respectively. Liwei Chou was the most prolific author, and Simons DG ranked first in the cited author. In the ranking of frequency and centrality in cited references, the first article was published by Tough EA and Simons DG, respectively. The keyword of "acupuncture" ranked first in frequency, "double blind" ranked first in centrality. "Meta-analysis" was the keyword with the strongest citation burst. There were three hot topics in this field, including "the clinical feature of MPS", "measure of intervention" and "research method". The mechanism of acupuncture on MPS was one of the main research directions.

Conclusion: This study reveals that acupuncture was more and more acceptable, while the cooperation between different countries, institutions and authors should be strengthened. The researches of therapeutic effect and mechanism were the main research directions. More high-quality clinical trials are needed to confirm the therapeutic effect of acupuncture for MPS, and more studies to unify the acupuncture parameters such as frequency, duration, and intensity. More basic studies are needed to elucidate the precise mechanism of acupuncture for MPS.

Keywords: CiteSpace; acupuncture; bibliometric analysis; myofascial pain syndromes.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The annual number of publications on acupuncture for MPS from 2000 to 2022.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Cited journal maps of acupuncture on MPS from 2000 to 2022. The nodes in the map represent journals, and the lines between the nodes mean co-citation relationships. The different colors of the nodes represent the different years. The larger the node area, the greater the number of co-citations. The purple ring represents centrality, and nodes with high centrality are considered as pivotal points in the publications.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Map of countries/regions researching acupuncture on MPS from 2000 to 2022. The nodes in the map represent countries or territories. The lines between the nodes means cooperation relationships. The different colors of the nodes represent the different years. The larger the node area, the larger the number of publications. The purple ring represents centrality, and nodes with high centrality are considered as pivotal points in the literature.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Map of institutions researching acupuncture for MPS from 2000 to 2022. The nodes in the map represent institutions, and the lines between the nodes represent collaborative relationships. The different colors in the nodes represent the different years, and the larger the node area, the larger the number of publications.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Map of authors related to acupuncture on MPS from 2000 to 2022. The nodes represent authors, and the lines between the nodes represent the collaborative relationships. The different colors of the nodes represent the different years. The larger the node area, the greater the number of publications.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Map of cited author related to acupuncture on MPS from 2000 to 2022. The nodes represent authors, and the lines between the nodes represent the co-citation relationships. The different colors of the nodes represent the different years. The larger the node area, the greater the number of co-citations. The purple ring represents centrality, and nodes with high centrality are considered as pivotal points in the publications.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Map of cited references related to acupuncture on MPS from 2000 to 2022. The nodes represent cited references, and the lines between the nodes represent the co-citation relationships. The different colors of the nodes represent the different years. The larger the node area, the greater the number of co-citations. The purple ring represents centrality, and nodes with high centrality are considered as pivotal points in the publications.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Map of keywords occurrence related to acupuncture on MPS from 2000 to 2022. The nodes represent key words, and the lines between the nodes represent the co-occurrence relationships. The different colors of the nodes represent the different years. The larger the node area, the higher the frequency.The purple ring represents centrality, and nodes with high centrality are considered as pivotal points in the publications.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Top 20 keywords with the strongest citation bursts. The red bars mean that the keywords were cited frequently, the green bars showed that the keywords were cited infrequently.
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