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. 2024 Jul 3:15:1390149.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1390149. eCollection 2024.

Potential value and research frontiers of virus in neuroinflammation: a bibliometric and visualized analysis

Danyang Li  1   2 , Minghua Wu  1   2
Affiliations

Potential value and research frontiers of virus in neuroinflammation: a bibliometric and visualized analysis

Danyang Li et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

Background: Neuroinflammation represents the immune response of the central nervous system to nerve injury, infection, toxin stimulation, or autoimmunity and is implicated in a wide range of neurological disorders. Viruses play a pivotal role as extrinsic biological drivers in neuroinflammation; however, numerous aspects remain unexplored. In this study, we employed bibliometric analysis to assess the current status of viral research in neuroinflammation and anticipate future research directions and emerging trends.

Methods: Conduct a comprehensive search for scholarly publications within the Web of Science Core Collection database, with search terms on neuroinflammation and virus. Apply Microsoft Excel Office, Hiplot, R (version 4.3.1), VOSviewer (version 1.6.20) and CiteSpace (6.2.R6, advanced) software for the bibliometric analysis and visualization.

Results: A total of 4230 articles and reviews on virus and neuroinflammation were identified, demonstrating a consistent upward trend over time. The United States was the country that contributed the most publications. Approximately 22274 authors from 4474 institutions contributed to the research. Johns Hopkins University leads with the highest number of publications and citations. The top three authors with the most published articles on this field are Power, C., Lane, T. E., and Buch, S. The Journal of Neuroinflammation is the most authoritative choice for researchers. The main research focuses in this field include multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, blood-brain barrier, COVID-19, Alzheimer's disease, gene therapy. In recent years, stress have emerged as hot keywords, particularly depression, human immunodeficiency virus-associated neurocognitive disorders, blood-brain barrier, gut microbiota related directions, indicating a potential shift in research focus.

Conclusion: Research on the virus and neuroinflammation has attracted increasing attention in the past decade. European and American countries have been pivotal in conducting research on virus and neuroinflammation, while China has produced a significant number of publications, its impact is still limited. Stress is likely to emerge as the next area of focus in this field. The association and regulation between viral infection and psychiatric disorders are not fully understood, and further research is needed to explore the role of neuroinflammation caused by different types of viral infection and psychiatric disorders.

Keywords: CiteSpace; VOSviewer; bibliometric analysis; hotspots; neuroinflammation; psychiatric disorders; virus.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of data collection and study design.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Trends in the growth of publications and the number of citations. The number of publications and citation frequency for each year from 1999 to the January 2024 showed the steady growth trend.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Analysis of country/region. (A) Geographical distribution of global output. The volume of publications is represented by color variation. (B) Visual cluster analysis of cooperation among countries. The nodes of different colors represent the countries/regions with different clusters, and the thickness of the lines indicates how closely countries cooperate. (C) Geographical distribution and the co-authorship network of the top 10 productive countries. (D) Radar chart of the average cited frequency of the top 10 productive countries.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Analysis of institutions and authors. (A) Radar chart of the average cited frequency of the top 10 institutions. (B) Visual cluster analysis of cooperation among institutions. The nodes of different colors represent the institutions with different clusters, and the thickness of the lines indicates how closely institutions cooperate. (C) Timeline visualization of cooperation among institutions. The different colors represent the time at which the institution began the relevant study. (D) Radar chart of the average cited frequency of the top 10 authors.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Analysis of journals. (A) Visual cluster analysis among journals. The density map of different colors represent the journals with different clusters. (B) Timeline visualization among Journals. The different colors represent the time when the journal began to publish relevant studies. (C) The dual-map overlap of journals. Citing journals are on the left, cited journals are on the right, and colored paths indicate citation relationships.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Analysis and network visualization of reference co-citation. (A) Visual analysis of co-cited references. The nodes of different colors represent the co-cited references with different clusters. (B) Cluster analysis of co-cited references. The nominal terms of these clusters are extracted from the keywords of the cited references by the LSI algorithm and clustered into 19 clusters. (C) Timeline distribution of the clusters. Each horizontal line represents a cluster. The smaller the number is, the larger the cluster, with #0 being the largest cluster. Nodes size reflects co-citation frequency, and the links between nodes indicate co-citation relationships. Nodes occurrence year is the time when they were first co-cited. (D) The top 20 references with the strongest citation bursts.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Analysis and network visualization of the research hotspots. (A) Network visualization map of keywords co-occurrence. The nodes of different colors represent the keywords with different clusters. (B) Cluster Analysis of keywords. The nominal terms of these clusters are extracted from the keywords of the publications by the LSI algorithm and clustered into 9 clusters. (C) Timeline distribution of cluster analysis of keywords. Nodes occurrence year is the time when they first appeared. (D) The top 25 keywords with the strongest citation bursts.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Analysis and network visualization of research on viruses, neuroinflammation, and psychiatric disorders. (A) Trends in the growth of publications. (B) Geographical distribution of global output. (C) Timeline visualization among Journals. The different colors represent the time when the journal began to publish relevant studies. (D) Timeline distribution of cluster analysis of keywords. Nodes occurrence year is the time when they first appeared. (E) Cluster Analysis of keywords. The nominal terms of these clusters are extracted from the keywords of the publications by the LSI algorithm and clustered into 13 clusters. (F) The top 20 keywords with the strongest citation bursts.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Association of virus and neurological disorders. The virus can directly traverse the endothelial cells of blood vessels and exploit the “Trojan horse” mechanism to breach the blood-brain barrier, thereby inducing an upregulation of immune cells and pro-inflammatory factors, facilitating excessive activation of glial cells for mediating neuroinflammation, consequently leading to neurological disorders. The contribution of this process in the pathogenesis of mental illnesses remains to be elucidated.
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Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82073096) and the Scientific Research Program of FuRong Laboratory (Grant No. 2023SK2085).

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