Global Trends in Research of Macrophages Associated With Acute Lung Injury Over Past 10 Years: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Acute lung injury (ALI) is an intractable disorder associated with macrophages. This bibliometric analysis was applied to identify the characteristics of global scientific output, the hotspots, and frontiers about macrophages in ALI over the past 10 years. We retrieved publications published from 2011 to 2020 and their recorded information from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-expanded) of Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). Bibliometrix package was used to analyze bibliometric indicators, and the VOSviewer was used to visualize the trend and hotspots of researches on macrophages in ALI. Altogether, 2,632 original articles were reviewed, and the results showed that the annual number of publications (Np) concerning the role of macrophages in ALI kept increasing over the past 10 years. China produced the most papers, the number of citations (Nc) and H-index of the USA ranked first. Shanghai Jiaotong University and INT IMMUNOPHARMACOL were the most prolific affiliation and journal, respectively. Papers published by Matute-Bello G in 2011 had the highest local citation score (LCS). Recently, the keywords "NLRP3" and "extracellular vesicles" appeared most frequently. Besides, researches on COVID-19-induced ALI related to macrophages seemed to be the hotspot recently. This bibliometric study revealed that publications related to macrophages in ALI tend to increase continuously. China was a big producer and the USA was an influential country in this field. Most studies were mainly centered on basic researches in the past decade, and pathways associated with the regulatory role of macrophages in inhibiting and attenuating ALI have become the focus of attention in more recent studies. What is more, our bibliometric analysis showed that macrophages play an important role in COVID-19-induced ALI and may be a target for the treatment of COVID-19.

Keywords: VOSviewer; acute lung injury; bibliometrics; bibliometrix; macrophages.

Figure 1

Flowchart of the screening process.

Figure 2

(A) The number of publications by year over the past 10 years. (B) Curve fitting of the of the total annual growth trend of publications (R² = 0.9418).

Figure 3

The yearly number of local citations of papers with high local citations (LCS). The size and colors of the circle represent the LCS of papers.

Figure 4

Mapping on co-cited references of studies related to macrophages in ALI(25 citations). (A) Network map of co-cited references. Of the 89,312 references, 133 (classified into six clusters) had at least 25 times cited. (B) Density visualization for keywords of cluster2 in co-cited references network map. Each keyword in the density visualization has colors that indicates its density. Red means appearing more frequently, while green means appearing less frequently.

Figure 5

The mapping on keywords of macrophages in ALI. (A) The 125 keywords that occurred more than 25 times were divided into five clusters by different colors: cluster 1: red, cluster 2: green, cluster 3: blue, cluster 4: yellow, cluster 5: purple. The size of the nodes represents the frequency of occurrences. (B) Visualization of keywords according to the APY. Keywords in yellow appeared later than that in blue.

Figure 6

The network mapping on keywords of macrophages in ALI caused by COVID-19. The 47 keywords that occurred more than 4 times were divided into four clusters by different colors: cluster 1: red, cluster 2: green, cluster 3: blue, cluster 4: yellow. The size of the nodes represents the frequency of occurrences.