Inflammation in intracerebral hemorrhage: A bibliometric perspective

Objective

Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a severe stroke that can adversely affect patient outcomes due to the accompanying inflammatory response. As a result, there is a growing interest in studying inflammation in ICH. We systematically reviewed relevant articles using the Web of Science to understand the literature on this subject. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the field through bibliometric analysis, highlight its current status, identify frontiers, and speculate on future directions.

Methods

We conducted a bibliometric analysis of the global English literature on inflammation related to ICH research based on the Web of Science from 1993 to the present to address publication trends and research hotspots.

Results

A total of 885 publications were included from 1993 to 2023. These articles were authored by 7375 researchers from 1639 organizations in 68 countries and published in 571 journals. Collectively, they cited 48,980 references from 5621 journals. The author who published the most articles was Dr. Zhang, John H. Interestingly, 6 of the top ten most published authors were from China. Regarding the countries that published the most articles, China was at the top of the list, followed by the United States. The most frequently used keywords were “Inflammation”, “Neuroinflammation”, and “Microglia”. Regarding journal publication and reference citations, Stroke was the most published and cited journal.

Conclusions

Over the past 30 years, there has been considerable progress in scientific research concerning inflammation in the context of ICH. The pivotal themes of these studies have been immune cells and inflammatory mediators. It is worth noting, however, that most of the published literature on inflammation in ICH pertains to preclinical studies, with comparatively fewer clinical investigations. Several challenges must be addressed to translate these promising research achievements into clinical practice.