Research Progress of Ferroptosis: A Bibliometrics and Visual Analysis Study

Abstract

Background: Ferroptosis is a type of cell death with major topic of debate under current research and plays an important role in disease regulation.

Objective: In this study, the literature management software Bibexcel and knowledge graph tool VOSviewer were used to summarize and analyze the international research trends and hotspots about ferroptosis in recent years, which highlight the disease mechanism, diagnosis, and treatment related to ferroptosis. Material/Methods. The core collection database of Web of Science was used for retrieving ferroptosis research literature. The information such as the amount of text, the country, the period, the institution, the fund, and the keywords was extracted by the bibliometric tool Bibexcel. The cooccurrence and clustering function of VOSviewer were used to analyze the high-frequency keywords and the cooperative network of the author, institution, and country.

Results: The research of ferroptosis started late and was formally proposed in 2012. It has developed rapidly and presented an "exponential" growth trend. China, the United States, Germany, Japan, and France are the main national forces of ferroptosis research development. The United States and China have a relatively high degree of support and attention to ferroptosis. Exploring oxidative stress, inducers/inhibitors, synergistic antitumor effect, relationships with other cell death types, GSH/GPX4 and iron metabolism imbalance related mechanisms of ferroptosis, and ferroptosis in the nervous system disease, ischemia-reperfusion injury, tumor, inflammation, and age-related diseases are the hot research directions.

Conclusion: Ferroptosis has been a research hotspot in the field of biomedicine in recent years and has attracted the attention of scholars all over the world. The occurrence mechanism of ferroptosis and its application in neurological diseases, ischemia and reperfusion injury, tumors, inflammation, and aging are the hot directions of current research. In the future, ferroptosis can be appropriately considered for strengthening new approaches, new diseases, new inductors, new inhibitors, clinical transformation, and traditional medicine research.