Research landscape of neovascularization in Diabetic Retinopathy from 2014 to 2023 (Preprint)
Authors: Xi Lei , Yang Taolian , Wang Dongmei , Yu Shirui , Li Aihua 
Published: January 2025

BACKGROUND

As neovascularization is a key point of disease progression, it is also the leading cause of vision loss in diabetic retinopathy.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis to explore the research status of neovascularization related diabetic retinopathy (NV in DR for short) and evaluate the focus and future aspects of this field.

METHODS

Publications related to neovascularization in diabetic retinopathy from 2014 to 2023 were retrieved from four different databases, PubMed, Web of Science core collection, Embase, and Dimensions. With bibliometric method, we analyzed annual publication counts, prolific and influential countries/regions, organizations. The findings were presented through descriptive statistics. VOSviewer was used to exhibit keywords networks, and the cooperations among countries/regions or organizations. We compared the Research Activity Codes of HRCS, or keywords clusters, for the overall research directions, and also analyzed the research topics for the specific contents by the text mining with BERTopic model, along with content interpretation for papers of high influence.

RESULTS

A total of 2759 publications were analyzed. Although with a decline in recent 2 years, the publications on retinal neovascularization in Diabetic Retinopathy overall have risen with fluctuations over the past 10 years. The United States and China contributed most of the papers, with 27.9% and 20.8% respectively. While the former was the most influential country. The major research organizations were also from the two countries, with 89 from Johns Hopkins University, account for 3.2%, 78 from Harvard University, account for 2.8%, as the top 2 organizations from the United States, and 39 from Central South University, account for 1.4%, 38 from Nanjing Medical University, account for 1.4%, as the top 2 organizations from China. The research mainly focused on biological and endogenous factors, and the development or evaluation of pharmaceuticals. Research topics in this filed were mainly focused on characteristics of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), pathogenesis and pathophysiological processes of diabetic retinopathy, ocular vascular lesions and pathological mechanisms, ocular examination techniques, or multiple drug treatments, especially anti-vascular endothelial growth factor drugs, non-drug treatments and combined treatments, and association between neovascular glaucoma and ocular surgeries.

CONCLUSIONS

With bibliometric analysis and research direction content analysis with text mining method, as well as the artificial interpretation, our study provided valuable insights into neovascularization related diabetic retinopathy research. The United States and China have had a significant academic impact. Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor mechanism and new technologies to find out neovascularization is crucial in the early DR detection, the prevention of blindness, and treatment of angiogenesis of DR, which may provide references for researchers in this fields.