Publication trends and hotspots for cervical cancer screening biomarker: a bibliometric analysis

The global disease burden of cervical cancer has remained significant throughout history. It is essential to discover sensitive and specific biomarkers for cervical cancer screening to enhance its quality and efficiency. This study aimed to delineate the publication trends and hotspots for cervical cancer screening biomarker through a bibliometric analysis. Therefore, researchers could acquire a comprehensive understanding of this area.

Professional search strategies were employed to collect literatures, with the central keywords being cervical cancer screening biomarker. Publications were retrieved from CBM/CNKI/Wanfang databases in Chinese and WoSCC/Pubmed databases in English. After being reviewed by two researchers, the publication dataset was analyzed in terms of sources, countries, authors, journals, citations and keywords using Citespace and bibliometrix package in the R environment.

547 publications of Chinese origin and 1068 of English origin were picked out. China, the USA and the Netherlands were the most contributing countries. Professor Meijer was the most outstanding author. There is a need to publish articles on our targeted topic in journals with greater academic influence. Current published literatures predominately focused on "p16(ink4a) protein", "DNA methylation" and "human papillomavirus". It has been popular in recent years to identify hub genes as candidate biomarkers through bioinformatics analysis.

It is a challenge to discover a novel and convenient biomarker to simplify the cervical cancer screening process. Global collaboration and clinical trials in high-incidence countries may contribute to the advancement of biomarker research. HPV testing, p16(ink4a) protein and DNA methylation used to be research hotspots, and they are now applied in clinical practice. Cervico-vaginal microbiota and bioinformatics analysis are the new keywords that have emerged recently.