Unexplored topics in intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy: A review and bibliometric analysis

To conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of research published on intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) and explore the related frontiers and critical issues concerning it, we searched the Web of Science Core Collection for ICP-related publications from the beginning of 2001 until August of 2023. CiteSpace and VOSviewer were utilized to evaluate the contribution and co-occurrence relationships of various countries and regions, institutes and so on to identify new frontiers and currently exciting topics. Our bibliometric analysis scrutinized 933 articles from 59 countries/regions. China has generated the largest number of publications (31.6% of the total), whereas Germany ranked first when it came to citations per publication. The Imperial College London ranked first with respect to publication output on ICP and betweenness centrality. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine was the journal with the highest plurality of papers. Authors such as Williamson, Beuers, Ulrich, and Shao were the most influential. Pregnancy, ursodeoxycholic acid, and ICP were principally noted in publications. Cluster analysis of the references that correlated with the 933 publications showed that they clustered into mortality, ABCB11, BSEP, MRP2, bile acid, and intrahepatic cholestasis. ICP is associated with adverse clinical outcomes for both the mother and fetus. This study provides a critical analysis of the current status and future research trends regarding ICP. It can serve as a useful reference, allowing researchers to conduct in-depth investigations into this promising field.