Research and publication trends on knee osteoarthritis and cellular senescence: a bibliometric analysis

Shuai Wang; Jiyong Yang; Ruian Xiang; Congcong Li; Junyi Li; Xingxing Shen; Wengang Liu; Xuemeng Xu

doi:10.3389/fphys.2023.1269338

Research and publication trends on knee osteoarthritis and cellular senescence: a bibliometric analysis

Front Physiol. 2023 Nov 17:14:1269338. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1269338. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Shuai Wang¹, Jiyong Yang¹, Ruian Xiang¹, Congcong Li¹, Junyi Li¹, Xingxing Shen¹, Wengang Liu², Xuemeng Xu²

Affiliations

¹ The Fifth Clinical College of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.
² Department of Orthopedics, Guangdong Provincial Second Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

Background: Cellular senescence is associated with age-related pathological changes, senescent cells promote the development of knee osteoarthritis. A better understanding between knee osteoarthritis and cellular senescence may enhance the effectiveness of therapies that aim to slow or stop the progression of this disease. Purpose: This study aimed to systematically analyze and visualize the publication trends, research frontiers and current research hotspots of knee osteoarthritis and cellular senescence by using bibliometrics. Methods: The publication search was performed on the Web of Science Core Collection database for documents published from 1992 to 2023. VOSviewer, Citespace, R package Bibliometrix and Microsoft Office Excel were used to study the characteristics of the publications. The publication number, countries, institutions, authors, journals, citations and co-citations, keywords were analyzed. Results: A total of 1,074 publications were analyzed, with an average annual growth rate of 29.89%. United States accounted for the biggest contributor, ranked first in publications and citations. Publications of this field were published in 420 journals, OSTEOARTHRITIS and CARTILAGE was the most influential. A total of 5,657 authors contributed to this research. The most productive author was Lotz, MK (n = 31, H-index = 22, Total citation = 2,619), followed by Loeser, R.F (n = 16, H-index = 14, Total citation = 2,825). However, the collaboration between authors was relatively weak. Out of the 1,556 institutions involved, 60% were from the United States. Scripps Research ranked first with 25 papers and a total of 2,538 citations. The hotspots of this field had focused on the pathomechanisms (e.g., expression, inflammation, apoptosis, autophagy, oxidative stress) and therapeutics (e.g., stem cell, platelet-rich plasma, transplantation, autologous chondrocytes, repair), and the exploration of Senolytics might be the important direction of future research. Conclusion: Research on the cross field of knee osteoarthritis and cellular senescence is flourishing. Age-related pathomechanism maps of various cells in the joint and the targeted medicines for the senescent cells may be the future trends. This bibliometric study provides a comprehensive analysis of this cross field and new insights into future research.

Keywords: WoSCC; bibliometric; cellular senescence; knee osteoarthritis; publication trends.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Guangzhou Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 202206010048), Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 2021B1111610007), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2021A1515011545), and Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 2018B020207009), Guangdong Provincial Enterprise Joint Foundation for Basic and Applied Basic Research General Project (No. 2022A1515220157), and Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Traditional Chinese Medicine research project (No. 20211023).