Study on subclinical hypothyroidism in pregnancy: a bibliometric analysis via CiteSpace

Abstract

Background

Subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) in pregnancy has drawn an increasing amount of attention over the past two decades. However, the definition of it, including its clinical diagnosis and treatment, is still being revised. An increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes have been shown in most but not all studies. The objective of this study was to evaluate the origin, current trend and research hotspots on SCH in pregnancy.

Methods

We obtained 630 records with 12,033 references, published between 1999 and 2018, from the online version of SCI-Expanded, Thomson Reuters Web of Science. The CiteSpace 5.3.R4 was used to perform the cooperation network analysis, key words co-occurrence and burst detection analysis, and reference cocitation analysis.

Results

We identified that the number of publications on SCH in pregnancy was increasing over the past two decades. Teng WP and Shan ZY from the First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China, were found to be the most productive researchers in this field. USA was the leading country for publications. Subclinical hypothyroidism, pregnancy, hypothyroidism, dysfunction, disease, management, women, deficiency, association and hyperthyroidism were the top 10 high frequency keywords in all recruit documents. Follow up was the most strength burst key word in this field from 1999 through 2018, followed by maternal hypothyroxinemia, child, hypothyroidism complicating pregnancy, antithyroid antibody and fetal. Moreover, cocitation reference analysis revealed the top landmark articles and clusters in this field.

Conclusion

This study provides the trends and frontiers in the field of SCH in pregnancy and valuable information for endocrine and/or obstetric researchers to identify new perspectives on potential collaborators and cooperative countries.

Keywords:

• Bibliometric analysis
• CiteSpace
• pregnancy
• subclinical hypothyroidism

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to the database of web of science, which provided us unrestricted online access. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Professor C.M. Chen, who invented CiteSpace, which is free to use.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 81703248] National Key R&D Program of China [grant number 2017YFC1600500] and Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau [grant number 20164Y0002]. The funders had no role in the conduct of the study, the analysis or interpretation of data, and the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.