Research on coronavirus disease 2019 and the kidney: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Background: In addition to damage to the lungs, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can damage multiple organs, including the kidney. Our purpose was to analyze the research hotspots and trends in COVID-19 and kidney diseases using bibliometrics to help clarify the development direction of this field.

Methods: We selected and extracted all relevant publications related to COVID-19 and the kidney from the Web of Science from December 1, 2019, to July 24, 2022. VOSviewer, RStudio, CiteSpace, and other software were used to visualize keywords, publishing trends, authors and their countries, and institutions in this field and perform the statistical analysis.

Results: A total of 645 articles published in 220 journals were included in this study. The United States and China contributed the most publications and were most active in international cooperation. In addition to COVID-19 and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), acute kidney injury (AKI), kidney transplant and mortality were the three keywords with the highest frequencies. In the initial stage of the COVID-19 outbreak, research focused on the clinical symptoms of COVID-19 and other macrocharacteristics, while in a later stage, the associations between SARS-CoV-2 infection and CKD and AKI, as well as the prognosis of patients with kidney disease or those who underwent kidney transplantation, gained more attention. The immune response and vaccines were also recent research hotspots.

Conclusions: This bibliometric analysis provides a comprehensive overview of research on COVID-19 and kidney disease, which has received continuous, global attention. AKI, CKD, kidney transplantation, immune response and vaccines are among the hotspots in this field.

Keywords: Acute kidney injury; Bibliometric analysis; COVID-19; Chronic kidney disease; Kidney transplant; Vaccine.

Fig. 1

Flow diagram of the article selection process used in the study.

Fig. 2

(a). The top 10 research fields in the WOS category (b). Monthly growth in the number of publications.

Fig. 3

(a). Core sources for COVID-19 and the kidney (b). The top 10 most locally cited sources (c). The dual-map overlay of journals on COVID-19 and kidney (The journal on the right is cited by the journal on the left.) Each dot in the diagram represents a journal. The cluster of colored dots represents the classification of disciplines based on the journal title. The color path connecting them represents the mentioned relationship. The number of authors is represented by the horizontal axis of the ellipse at the start and end points, and the number of papers is represented by the vertical axis.

Fig. 4

(a). The top 10 most productive authors (the blue columns represent the number of published papers, and the orange broken-line articles fractionalized represent the author's contribution to the literature collection in this field). (b). The frequency distribution of scientific productivity. (c). A cooperative network of authors. (d). Cooperation network of cocited authors (different color clusters represent the corresponding authors' research on similar topics.).

Fig. 5

(a). Countries with the top 10 articles published over the years. (b). Map of national cooperation (The size of the circle represents the number of articles published by the country, and the line represents the intensity of cooperation). (c). Country collaboration map (the color depths represent the number of documents, and the lines represent the intensity of cooperation). (d). The number of MCPs and SCPs in the top 20 corresponding authors' countries. (MCP: multicountry publication; SCP: single-country publication).

Fig. 6

(a). Top 10 research institutions publishing trends The vertical axis represents the number of documents issued, and the horizontal axis represents the year. (b). A collaborative network of research institutions The size of the circle represents the number of documents sent, and the lines between organizations represent cooperative relationships.

Fig. 7

Co-occurrence map of keywords.

Fig. 8

(a). The top 25 keywords with the strongest citation bursts. (b). A co-occurrence map of keywords. The figure indicates the period of keyword occurrence from 2020 (blue) to 2021 (yellow) (the node size represents the frequency of keywords).

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