Published online Jun 28, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i24.3899
Peer-review started: April 9, 2023
First decision: May 12, 2023
Revised: May 20, 2023
Accepted: May 24, 2023
Article in press: May 24, 2023
Published online: June 28, 2023
Processing time: 79 Days and 18.6 Hours
Cirrhosis is deemed a systemic disease associated with the immune system resulting from a persistent liver injury leading to liver fibrosis. Immunological factors play important regulatory roles in the development and progression of cirrhosis.
Bibliometrics is one of the most used methods for the systematic evaluation of a field of study. To date, no bibliometric studies have been conducted on the role of immunological factors in cirrhosis. A statistical analysis conducted by a bibliometric method may provide a more comprehensive understanding and assessment of the hot spots and trends in research on immunological factors in cirrhosis disease.
To provide a comprehensive overview of the knowledge structure and research hotspots of immunological factors in cirrhosis, which can help scholars quickly understand the research status and provide new ideas and directions for studying immunological factors in cirrhosis.
We retrieved publications related to immunological factors in cirrhosis between 2003 to 2022 from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database on December 7, 2022. The search strategy was TS = ((Liver Cirrhosis OR hepatic cirrhosis OR liver fibrosis) AND (Immunologic* Factor* OR Immune Factor* OR Immunomodulator* OR Biological Response Modifier* OR Biomodulator*)). Only original articles and reviews were included. A total of 2873 publications were analyzed using indicators of publication and citation metrics, countries, institutes, authors, journals, references, and keywords by CiteSpace and VOSviewer.
A total of 5104 authors from 1173 institutions across 51 countries published 2873 papers on cirrhosis and immunological factors in 281 journals. In this article, we explored and analyzed research in this field according to country, journal, author, and other relevant factors. Current research hotspots in this field include fibrosis, cirrhosis, inflammation, liver fibrosis, expression, hepatocellular carcinoma, activation, primary biliary cirrhosis, disease, and hepatic stellate cells. Burst keywords (e.g., epidemiology, gut microbiota, and pathways) represent research frontiers that have attracted the interest of researchers in recent years.
We used bibliometrics, a relatively new literature research method, to analyze the knowledge structure and hotspots of research in the field, providing new ideas for promoting scientific research and clinical applications.
Burst keywords, including immune dysfunction, gut microbiota, epidemiology, mouse models, pathways, obesity, extracellular vesicles, bile acids, and the extracellular matrix, represent the current frontiers of research on immunological factors in cirrhosis.