Topics and trends in gastroesophageal reflux disease research over the past 60 years: a text mining and network analysis.

Abstract

Background: Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) presents a complex pathophysiological challenge with intricate interactions among its biological components, yet the mechanisms remain incompletely understood. This study aimed to conduct a quantitative analysis to investigate the concentration and evolution of domain knowledge in GERD research.

Methods: A bibliographic search in PubMed retrieved 18,459 abstracts of experimental studies on GERD, published between 1963 and 2022. Abstracts were scanned automatically for 477 biological components proposed in recent publications, which are represented by a set of (I) genes and molecules (n=180), (II) definition of cytology, histology, and anatomy (n=54), (III) clinical definition (n=243). For each component, semantic synonyms were recovered from catalogues and domain knowledge. The results are visualized as networks indicating the frequency at which different components are referenced together within each abstract.

Results: Over time the GERD network has seen a progression in the increasing of new components and connectivity. The clinical definition appears to be the most abundant, while studies exploring micro-level mechanisms remain notably scarce. Meanwhile, certain pivotal components consistently attract significant attention, forming crucial elements in this multifactorial disease. However, the micro-level analysis reveals a recent plateau in progress, indicating a bottleneck phase currently.

Conclusions: GERD domain knowledge has remained confined within established frameworks over history, highlighting the importance of developing novel integrated research paradigms among endless data to bridge the gap between bench and bedside.