Bibliometric analysis of mucosal immunity in IgA nephropathy from 1990 to 2022

Objective: The study aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of mucosal immunity in IgA nephropathy (IgAN) and indicate its current status, hot sopts, and direction of future studies.

Methods: The literature data was collected from the Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace 6.1.R3 was employed to conduct a visualization bibliometric analysis of mucosal immunity in IgA nephropathy, including authors, countries, journals, keywords, organizations, references, the bursts of keywords and references, and the timeline of keyword clusters and reference clusters.

Results: A total of 315 publications from 1990 to 2022 were included. The number of articles in this field has increased in recent years. Suzuki H, Coppo R, and Feehally J took the first place parallelly with 18 articles. Japan contributes the most articles, accounting for 27.3% of all the publications. The institutions with the most publications were Juntendo University and University of Alabama Birmingham. 453 keywords were concluded in the analysis, which mainly focus on the mucosal pathogenesis and therapy of the IgAN. The top five co-cited reference cluster are "aberrantly glycosylated IgA," "corticosteroids," "animal models," "o-glycosylationm" and "microRNA-630." The most recently burst of keyword is "tonsillectomy" and "gut."

Conclusion: This was the first bibliometric analysis to systematically analyze the mucosal immunity in IgAN, which obtained the current status and indicated the future research hotspots and development trends. The gut microbiota and the related therapy-targeted mucosal immunity might be the future research hotspot.