Journal of Pain Research (May 2021)
A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends of Acupuncture Therapy in the Treatment of Migraine from 2000 to 2020
Abstract
Tingting Zhao,1,* Jing Guo,1,* Yafang Song,2 Hao Chen,2 Mengzhu Sun,1 Lu Chen,3 Hao Geng,3 Lixia Pei,3 Jianhua Sun3 1Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China; 2Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China; 3Jiangsu Province Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jianhua Sun; Lixia PeiDepartment of Acupuncture Rehabilitation, The Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Hanzhong Road, Qinhuai District, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail [email protected]; [email protected]: Migraine is the second-leading cause of disability worldwide. It is often characterized by attacks of severe, mostly unilateral, pulsating headache associated with symptoms such as photophobia, phonophobia, nausea, vomiting, and cutaneous allodynia. Acupuncture therapy has been used worldwide for the treatment of migraine. However, no visual bibliometric analysis has been conducted on the effects of acupuncture on migraine over the past 20 years. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the current status and trends on the use of acupuncture in the treatment of migraine from 2000 to 2020.Purpose: The objective of this study is to identify the current status and emerging trends of the global use of acupuncture on migraine from 2000 to 2020 using CiteSpace and VOSviewer.Methods: Web of Science databases were searched for publications related to acupuncture therapy for treating migraine between 2000 and 2020. CiteSpace and VOSviewer were used to analyze the number of publications per year, countries, institutions, authors, journals, references, and keywords.Results: A total of 572 publications were included in the final analysis. The total number of publications has continued to increase with some fluctuations over the past 20 years. The most productive country and institution in this field were the USA, and Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, respectively. The most active and cited authors were Liang FR and Linde K, respectively. Cephalalgia was the most productive, cited, and co-cited journal. The Linde K (2005) had the highest co-citation, citation number and centrality. The keywords “migraine” ranked first in frequency. The common type of migraine (tension-type headache), research method (randomized controlled trial, multicenter, double-blind), acupuncture’s role (prophylactic, quality of life, pain), and evaluation (meta-analysis, systematic review) were the hotspots and frontier trends of acupuncture therapy on migraine between 2000 and 2020.Conclusion: The present study examined the research-related trend in acupuncture therapy on migraine using bibliometric methods and identified the statement and research frontiers over the past two decades. This may help researchers to identify potential hotspots and new directions for future research in this field.Keywords: acupuncture, migraine, bibliometric analysis, CiteSpace, VOSviewer, network
