Study on subclinical hypothyroidism in pregnancy: a bibliometric analysis via CiteSpace

Subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) in pregnancy has drawn an increasing amount of attention over the past two decades. However, the definition of it, including its clinical diagnosis and treatment, is still being revised. An increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes have been shown in most but not all studies. The objective of this study was to evaluate the origin, current trend and research hotspots on SCH in pregnancy.

We obtained 630 records with 12,033 references, published between 1999 and 2018, from the online version of SCI-Expanded, Thomson Reuters Web of Science. The CiteSpace 5.3.R4 was used to perform the cooperation network analysis, key words co-occurrence and burst detection analysis, and reference cocitation analysis.

We identified that the number of publications on SCH in pregnancy was increasing over the past two decades. Teng WP and Shan ZY from the First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China, were found to be the most productive researchers in this field. USA was the leading country for publications. Subclinical hypothyroidism, pregnancy, hypothyroidism, dysfunction, disease, management, women, deficiency, association and hyperthyroidism were the top 10 high frequency keywords in all recruit documents. Follow up was the most strength burst key word in this field from 1999 through 2018, followed by maternal hypothyroxinemia, child, hypothyroidism complicating pregnancy, antithyroid antibody and fetal. Moreover, cocitation reference analysis revealed the top landmark articles and clusters in this field.

This study provides the trends and frontiers in the field of SCH in pregnancy and valuable information for endocrine and/or obstetric researchers to identify new perspectives on potential collaborators and cooperative countries.