Physical Exercise in the Context of Air Pollution: An Emerging Research Topic

Abstract

Physical exercise (PE) brings physiological benefits to human health; paradoxically, exposure to air pollution (AP) is harmful. Hence, the combined effects of AP and PE are interesting issues worth exploring. The objective of this study is to review literature involved in AP-PE fields to perform a knowledge-map analysis and explore the collaborations, current hotspots, physiological applications, and future perspectives. Herein, cluster, co-citation, and co-occurrence analysis were applied using CiteSpace and VOSviewer software. The results demonstrated that AP-PE domains have been springing up and in rapid growth since the 21st century. Subsequently, active countries and institutions were identified, and the productive institutions were mainly located in USA, China, UK, Spain, and Canada. Developed countries seemed to be the major promoters. Additionally, subject analysis found that environmental science, public health, and sports medicine were the core subjects, and multidimensional communications were forming. Thereafter, a holistic presentation of reference co-citation clusters was conducted to discover the research topics and trace the development focuses. Youth, elite athletes, and rural population were regarded as the noteworthy subjects. Commuter exposure and moderate aerobic exercise represented the common research context and exercise strategy, respectively. Simultaneously, the research hotspots and application fields were elaborated by keyword co-occurrence distribution. It was noted that physiological adaptations including respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic, and mental health were the major themes; oxidative stress and inflammatory response were the mostly referred mechanisms. Finally, several challenges were proposed, which are beneficial to promote the development of the research field. Molecular mechanisms and specific pathways are still unknown and the equilibrium points and dose-effect relationships remain to be further explored. We are highly confident that this study provides a unique perspective to systematically and comprehensively review the pieces of AP-PE research and its related physiological mechanisms for future investigations.

Mapping Knowledge Structure and Global Research Trends in Gout: A Bibliometric Analysis From 2001 to 2021

“…The references in the co-cited network ( Figure 4A ) were divided into 15 different clusters by cluster analysis shown in the timeline view ( Figure 5A ). These clusters were labeled by extricating terms from the titles of cited publications using the log-likelihood ratio algorithm due to its better performance in covering the “uniqueness and coverage” of all labels ( 11 , 18 ). As can be seen in Figure 5A , the cluster of prevalence comorbidities was the largest (#0), followed by controlled trial (#1) and acute gouty arthritis (#2).…”

“…WoS Core Collection (WoSCC) database is a typical citation database containing literature abstracts and other relevant data such as citation and research collaboration information, facilitating bibliometric analysis ( 19 ). Moreover, it could directly provide reference files that met the specific format requirements as dictated by bibliometric software ( 11 , 15 ). In our study, all literature was retrieved and downloaded from the Science Citation Index Expanded of WoSCC database on March 30, 2022, to avoid bias caused by database updates.…”

“…Bibliometrics, a feasible method, can quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the scientific achievements, provide an objective and holistic overview, discover the spatial and temporal distribution of research status, identify high-impact articles, authors, and institutions, reveal research hotspots and trends, and ultimately contribute to the advancement of the research field ( 11 ). It has been widely used in medical fields such as orthopedics ( 12 ), COVID-19 ( 13 ), oncology ( 14 ), and rheumatology ( 15 ).…”

Physical culture in the context of modern philosophical anthropology

“…The methodology for calculating key indicators for analysis and identification of the most significant studies is described in detail in the works of van Eck and Waltman [27,28]. The validity of this approach is confirmed by studies of human physical activity [29][30][31][32].…”

Global Insights Into Rural Health Workers' Job Satisfaction: A Scientometric Perspective

“…The pre-retrieval results found that there was no publication before 1 January 1995; hence, the search time frame in this study was set from 1 January 1995 solstice to 31 December 2021. According to previous literature (21)(22)(23), "articles or reviews" were used as inclusion criteria, and the language was limited to "English." Related data were extracted and downloaded within 1 day to avoid bias due to frequent database updates.…”