Seeing beyond words: Visualizing autism spectrum disorder biomarker insights

Abstract

Objective: This study employs bibliometric and visual analysis to elucidate global research trends in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) biomarkers, identify critical research focal points, and discuss the potential integration of diverse biomarker modalities for precise ASD assessment.

Methods: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis was conducted using data from the Web of Science Core Collection database until December 31, 2022. Visualization tools, including R, VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and gCLUTO, were utilized to examine collaborative networks, co-citation patterns, and keyword associations among countries, institutions, authors, journals, documents, and keywords.

Results: ASD biomarker research emerged in 2004, accumulating a corpus of 4348 documents by December 31, 2022. The United States, with 1574 publications and an H-index of 213, emerged as the most prolific and influential country. The University of California, Davis, contributed significantly with 346 publications and an H-index of 69, making it the leading institution. Concerning journals, the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Autism Research, and PLOS ONE were the top three publishers of ASD biomarker-related articles among a total of 1140 academic journals. Co-citation and keyword analyses revealed research hotspots in genetics, imaging, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, gut microbiota, and eye tracking. Emerging topics included "DNA methylation," "eye tracking," "metabolomics," and "resting-state fMRI."

Conclusion: The field of ASD biomarker research is dynamically evolving. Future endeavors should prioritize individual stratification, methodological standardization, the harmonious integration of biomarker modalities, and longitudinal studies to advance the precision of ASD diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder; Bibliometric; Biomarkers; Data integration; Global trends; Research hotspots.

Fig. 1

The data collection and retrieval strategy.

Fig. 2

Global publication output and citation trend on biomarker research in ASD from 2004 to 2022.

Fig. 3

The co-authorship network of countries/regions.

Fig. 4

The co-authorship network of institutions. Note: The curved segments outside the circle represent institutions, with the size of the curved segments indicating the volume of publications. The connecting lines between curved segments represent collaborative relationships between institutions, with wider lines indicating more frequent collaborations.

Fig. 5

The co-authorship network of authors.

Fig. 6

Heatmap of annual publication distribution for top 10 journals (A) and overlay of journal pairings (B).

Fig. 7

Cluster View of Co-cited References from 2004 to 2022 Note: Image A depicts the cluster view of co-cited references, where temporal evolution is illustrated through lines of distinct colors. Nodes along these lines represent the cited references, with the node size reflecting the citation frequency of the literature. Nodes in deep red indicate strong citation bursts, highlighting periods where related research has been extensively cited. Image B shows a timeline map of co-cited literature clusters, with cluster numbers on the Y-axis and the years of citation publication on the X-axis. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Fig. 8

Visualization of Bi-clustering Analysis for the Top 100 Keywords Note: Panel A illustrates the bi-clustering analysis of keywords using a landscape representation with peaks and hills. Each hill corresponds to a cluster of keywords, with the size of the hill proportional to the number of keywords within the cluster. The color at the crest of each hill correlates with the intra-cluster deviation, where red signifies low variability and blue indicates high variability of keywords within the cluster. In Panel B, the bi-clustering analysis is presented as a heatmap. The columns represent the sequence of article appearances for keywords, while the rows indicate the keywords and their respective clusters. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Fig. 9

Distribution of key biomarkers in hotspot areas of ASD biomarker research.