Hotspots and Frontiers of Host Immune Response in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: A Bibliometric and Scientific Visual Research from 2000 to 2022

BACKGROUND: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a disease with significant morbidity, progressive deterioration of lung function till death, and lack of effective treatment options. This study aims to explore the global research trends in IPF and immune response to predict the research hotspot in the future. Materials and methods. All related publications on IPF and immune response since the establishment of diagnostic criteria for IPF were retrieved using the Web of Science (WOS) database. VOSviewer, GraphPad Prism 6, CiteSpace version 5.6. R5 64-bit, and a bibliometrics online platform were used to extract and analyze the trends in relevant fields. RESULTS: From March 1, 2000, to September 30, 2022, a total of 658 articles with 25,126 citations met the inclusion criteria. The United States ranked first in number of publications (n = 217), number of citations (n = 14,745), and H-index (62). China ranked second in publications (n = 124) and seventh and fifth for citation frequency and H-index, respectively. The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (impact factor = 30.528) published the most articles in the field. The author Kaminski N. from the United States was the most influential author with 26 publications and an H-index of 24. Among the 52 keywords that co-occurred at least 20 times, the main keywords were concentrated in “Inflammation related” and “Biomarker related” clusters. “biomarker” (AAY 2018.64, 25 times) was a newly emerged keyword. CONCLUSIONS: The United States has an unequivocal advantage in IPF and immunization, but China shows a faster developing trend. The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine should be prioritized for leading articles. This study indicates that exploration of ideal immune-related biomarkers to provide evidence for the clinical work of IPF might be a hotspot in the near future.