Mapping global research trends: Nutrition associations with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease - a Scopus bibliometric analysis

Abstract

BACKGROUND Several bibliometric analyses have been carried out to identify research hotspots and trends in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) research. Nonetheless, there are still significant knowledge gaps that must be filled to advance our understanding of and ability to treat NAFLD. AIM To evaluate, through bibliometric and visual analysis, the current status of related research, related research frontiers, and the developmental trends in the field of diet and NAFLD. METHODS We retrieved publications about diet and NAFLD published between 1987 and 2022 from Scopus. Next, we used VOSviewer 1.6.20 to perform bibliometric analysis and visualization. RESULTS We found a total of 1905 studies, including 1637 (85.93%) original articles and 195 (10.24%) reviews, focused on the examination of NAFLD and its correlation with diet that were published between 1987 and 2022. Among the remaining five types of documents, 38 were letters, notes, editorials, meeting minutes, or brief surveys, representing 1.99% of the total documents. The countries with the most publications on this topic were China (n = 539; 28.29%), followed by the United States (n = 379; 19.90%), Japan (n = 133; 6.98%), and South Korea (n = 127; 6.6%). According to the citation analysis, the retrieved papers were cited an average of 32.3 times and had an h -index of 106, with 61014 total citations. The two main clusters on the map included those related to: (1) Inflammation and oxidative stress; and (2) Dietary interventions for NAFLD. CONCLUSION This was the first study to use data taken from Scopus to visualize network mapping in a novel bibliometric analysis of studies focused on diet and NAFLD. After 2017, the two domains that received the most attention were “dietary interventions for NAFL”’ and “‘inflammation and oxidative stress implicated in NAFLD and its correlation with diet.” We believe that this study provides important information for academics, dietitians, and doctors, and that additional research on dietary interventions and NAFLD is warranted.