High-impact research bibliometric analysis on osteoarthritis and cytokines: Current summary and future trends

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent arthritis type, with cytokines imbalance playing a key role in its development. Despite this, no bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles on this topic has been conducted yet.

To analyze the top 100 most cited articles on OA and cytokines from 2005 to 2024, providing an overview and predicting future trends using bibliometric methods.

OA cytokine articles from 2005 to 2024 were sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection database using subject terms and manual screening. Origin 2021 was used to chart publication timelines and journal distribution. R4.3.1 was used to conduct the top ten authors, journal distribution stats, and keyword analysis. VOSviewer1.6.20 generated cluster analysis of publishing countries (regions), with data exported to SCImago Graphica for geographic visualization and cooperation analysis. Combined Pajek with VOSviewer to refine keywords layout analysis. Used Citespace6.2.R6 for institutional co-occurrence maps, reference co-citation maps and cluster analysis.

The selected articles, published between 2005 and 2022, includes the top 100 most-cited articles from a pool of 6417. These were authored by 644 individuals across 181 institutions in 22 countries, appearing in 37 journals. Citation counts ranged from 98 to 759, with a median of 132.5 and an average of 159.9 per year. The year that produced the most influential articles was 2011 (n = 12). The leading contributors in terms of published articles are the United States (n = 39), the University of Munich (n = 8), the journal OSTEOARTHRITIS AND CARTILAGE (n = 22), and author Shakibaei M (n = 7). The six most frequent keywords are "osteoarthritis," "rheumatoid arthritis," "inflammation," "expression," "chondrocytes," and "cytokines." The top co-cited reference is Role of pro-inflammatory cytokines in osteoarthritis pathophysiology. The study also highlights recent research trends in OA treatment, including nanotechnology, macrophage phenotype regulation, and selective MMP-13 inhibitors.

Extensive research has been conducted on cytokines in OA pathogenesis and treatment. This study seeks to identify influential articles, summarize current research, predict future trends, and offer insights for developing new OA treatments and references for interested scholars.