A bibliometric and visual analysis of epigenetic research publications for Alzheimer's disease (2013-2023)

Front Aging Neurosci. 2024 Jan 16:16:1332845. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2024.1332845. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Background: Currently, the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is progressively rising, particularly in developed nations. There is an escalating focus on the onset and progression of AD. A mounting body of research indicates that epigenetics significantly contributes to AD and holds substantial promise as a novel therapeutic target for its treatment.

Objective: The objective of this article is to present the AD areas of research interest, comprehend the contextual framework of the subject research, and investigate the prospective direction for future research development.

Methods: ln Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC), we searched documents by specific subject terms and their corresponding free words. VOSviewer, CiteSpace and Scimago Graphica were used to perform statistical analysis on measurement metrics such as the number of published papers, national cooperative networks, publishing countries, institutions, authors, co-cited journals, keywords, and visualize networks of related content elements.

Results: We selected 1,530 articles from WOSCC from January 2013 to June 2023 about epigenetics of AD. Based on visual analysis, we could get that China and United States were the countries with the most research in this field. Bennett DA was the most contributed and prestigious scientist. The top 3 cited journals were Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Neurobiology of Aging and Molecular Neurobiology. According to the analysis of keywords and the frequency of citations, ncRNAs, transcription factor, genome, histone modification, blood DNA methylation, acetylation, biomarkers were hot research directions in AD today.

Conclusion: According to bibliometric analysis, epigenetic research in AD was a promising research direction, and epigenetics had the potential to be used as AD biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; bibliometric analysis; epigenetics; neurology; visualization.

Publication types

  • Review

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 the Chengdu Medical College-Chengdu Eighth People’s Hospital Clinical Science Research Fund Project (YLLNZD2301); the Development and Regeneration Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province (SYS13-006). The National College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program Project (202213705036); Sichuan Provincial College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program Project (S202313705089).