The latest research trends in primary biliary cholangitis: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Background and aims: The bibliometric analysis uses the citation count of an article to measure its impact in the scientific community, but no study has been undertaken to determine the most influential papers in the field of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). This study aimed to investigate the global research interest regarding PBC in dentistry using a bibliometric approach. Methods: We searched the Web of Science Core Collection database to find the top 100 most cited (T100) articles focusing on PBC. The information about each article including citations, authors, journals, countries, institutions, and keywords was recorded for bibliometric analysis. Results: The T100 articles related to PBC were published from 1983 to 2019 and were originated from 26 countries. A total of 805 different authors were from 342 different institutions, and articles written by them were published in 35 journals. The five most frequently occurring keywords were “biochemical response”, “ursodeoxycholic acid”, “primary biliary cirrhosis”, “antimitochondrial antibody”, and “autoimmunity”. The T100 articles were classified into different research focuses: pathogenesis (41%), treatment (20%), prognosis (12%), epidemiology (9%), diagnosis (8%) and others (10%). These 100 articles included 32 observational studies, 29 basic research articles, 15 reviews, eight meta-analyses, 12 clinical trials, and four clinical guidelines. Conclusions: This report presents major advances and changes in research regarding PBC. The single treatment method entered a bottleneck period, and combined treatment with immunosuppressant, local therapy, and surgery will become the next research focus to identify possible beneficial treatment combinations.