Bibliometric review of 1992–2022 publications on acupuncture for cognitive impairment

Abstract

ObjectiveTo explore the development context, research hotspots, and frontiers of acupuncture therapy for cognitive impairment (CI) from 1992 to 2022 by visualization analysis.MethodsArticles about acupuncture therapy for cognitive impairment were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) until 1 March 2022. Basic information was collected by Excel 2007, and VOSviewer 1.6.17 was used to analyze the co-occurrence of countries, institutes, and authors. Co-citation maps of authors and references were analyzed by CiteSpace V.5.8.R3. In addition, CiteSpace was used to analyze keyword clusters and forecast research frontiers.ResultsA total of 279 articles were retrieved, including articles from 19 countries, 334 research institutes, and 101 academic journals. The most published country and institutes were the People's Republic of China (217) and the Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (40). Ronald C Petersen owned the highest co-citations (56). Keywords and co-cited references cluster showed the main research directions in this area, including “ischemic stroke,” “cerebral ischemia/reperfusion,” “mild cognitive impairment,” “Alzheimer's disease,” “vascular dementia,” “vascular cognitive impairment with no dementia,” “multi-infarct dementia,” “synaptic injury,” “functional MRI,” “glucose metabolism,” “NMDA,” “nuclear factor-kappa b pathway,” “neurotrophic factor,” “matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2),” “tumor necrosis factor-alpha,” “Bax,” “Caspase-3,” and “Noxa”. Trending keywords may indicate frontier topics, such as “randomized controlled trial,” “rat model,” and “meta-analysis.”ConclusionThis research provides valuable information for the study of acupuncture. Diseases focus on mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's disease (AD), and vascular dementia (VaD). Tauopathies with hyperphosphorylation of Tau protein as the main lesions also need to be paid attention to. The development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will better explain the therapeutic effect of acupuncture treatment. The effect of acupuncture on a single point is more convincing, and acupuncture on Baihui (GV20) may be needed in the future. Finally, the implementation of high-quality multicenter randomized controlled trials (RCTs) requires increased collaboration among experts from multiple fields and countries.

Global trends and development of acupuncture for stroke: A review and bibliometric analysis

“…More attention could be given to this area in the future by researchers specializing in relevant fields. [62]…”

“…More attention could be given to this area in the future by researchers specializing in relevant fields. [62] Pain is an unbearable symptom that affects physical, emotional, and cognitive functioning, leading to a lower quality of life and a higher risk of death. A variety of age groups, including adolescents and elderly people, suffer from pain.…”

Visualization of Microcirculation at Acupoints in vivo of Alzheimer’s Disease Animal Model with Photoacoustic Microscope: A Pilot Study

“…In the realm of animal experimentation, numerous research had been conducted to investigate the presence of acupuncture intervention in AD through diverse mechanisms [ 29 ], including to alterations in synaptic morphology and structure by regulation of some relevance protein expression [ 30, 31 ], mitigation of Aβ deposition [ 32, 33 ] and excessive tau protein phosphorylation [ 34–37 ], inhibition of central nervous system inflammation and neuronal apoptosis [ 38–40 ], and resistance against oxidative stress [ 41, 42 ]. Acupuncture is an intervention based on acupoints, and multiple literature studies on the selection of acupoints for AD acupuncture intervention have found that ST36 ( Zusanli ) and CV12 ( Zhongwan ) acupoints were one of the more commonly used acupoints in AD acupuncture intervention [ 28 ]. For the intervention in this research, we specifically selected bilateral ST36 and CV12 acupoints.…”

Trends and hotspots in acupuncture treatment of rat models of stroke: a bibliometric analysis from 2004 to 2023

“…Tao, Jing, and their team topped the list with 33 papers regarding author distribution. According to Price’s law ( Zhou D. et al, 2022 ; Zhou R. et al, 2022 ), the core authors’ minimum number of publications is N = 0.749 (M max is the most prolific author’s publication), calculated as N ≈ 4.3. Regarding the number of publications, 35 authors have published more than 4 articles, accounting for 7.11% (< 50%) of the total publications; this indicates that a core group of authors has yet to be formed in this research area.…”