A bibliometric and visual analysis of epigenetic research publications for Alzheimer's disease (2013-2023)

Abstract

Background: Currently, the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is progressively rising, particularly in developed nations. There is an escalating focus on the onset and progression of AD. A mounting body of research indicates that epigenetics significantly contributes to AD and holds substantial promise as a novel therapeutic target for its treatment.

Objective: The objective of this article is to present the AD areas of research interest, comprehend the contextual framework of the subject research, and investigate the prospective direction for future research development.

Methods: ln Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC), we searched documents by specific subject terms and their corresponding free words. VOSviewer, CiteSpace and Scimago Graphica were used to perform statistical analysis on measurement metrics such as the number of published papers, national cooperative networks, publishing countries, institutions, authors, co-cited journals, keywords, and visualize networks of related content elements.

Results: We selected 1,530 articles from WOSCC from January 2013 to June 2023 about epigenetics of AD. Based on visual analysis, we could get that China and United States were the countries with the most research in this field. Bennett DA was the most contributed and prestigious scientist. The top 3 cited journals were Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Neurobiology of Aging and Molecular Neurobiology. According to the analysis of keywords and the frequency of citations, ncRNAs, transcription factor, genome, histone modification, blood DNA methylation, acetylation, biomarkers were hot research directions in AD today.

Conclusion: According to bibliometric analysis, epigenetic research in AD was a promising research direction, and epigenetics had the potential to be used as AD biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; bibliometric analysis; epigenetics; neurology; visualization.

Figure 1

Article retrieval and process flow chart.

Figure 2

(A) A world map of the intensity of cooperation among 20 countries. (B) CiteSpace-based visualization of national timeline diagram.

Figure 3

It showed organization cooperation clusters. Each cluster described the main institution and the topics of the cluster were shown in the corresponding legend.

Figure 4

The cluster visualization map of topics for the authors. The colors of the clusters corresponded to the numbers #0–5 in the color bar and the topics of the cluster were shown in the corresponding legend.

Figure 5

(A) Top 20 keywords with the strongest citation bursts. The strongest citation bursts time period was indicated in red. (B) The co-occurrence analysis of keywords based on VOSviewer. The size of the circle indicated the frequency of the keyword, different colors represented different clusters, the lines between nodes showed the correlation between keywords, the more lines the keywords distribute, and the relationship between this keyword and other keywords was stronger.

Figure 6

The co-occurrence analysis of keywords based on CiteSpace. The keywords were grouped into 8 clusters by topic and labeled with different colors. The topics of the cluster were shown in the corresponding legend.

Figure 7

The clustering visualization map of topics for cited references. The colors of the clusters corresponded to the numbers #0–7 in the color bar and the topics of the cluster were shown in the corresponding legend.

Figure 8

Epigenetic mechanisms of AD. (A) The red circle represents the hippocampus, and the black circle represents the cerebellum. (B) The red circle represents the frontal lobe, and the black circle represents the temporal lobe. Tet1, Tet2, and Tet3, All Tet proteins regulate DNA demethylation in the body; FA, formaldehyde; FDH, formaldehyde dehydrogenase; PSEN1, presenilin 1; BACE1, beta-site APP cleaving enzyme 1; NEP, neprilysin; G9a/GLP, Both are histone methyltransferase; LSD1/JMJD3, Both are histone demethylase; HATs, histone acetylases; HDACs, histone deacetylases; ATG5, autophagy-related genes 5; BC200, brain cytoplasmic 200; MAPK/ERK, protein kinase/extracellular signal-reduced kinases; NF-κB, nuclear factor κB; CAMKK2, calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase 2.