THE RELATIONSHIP OF BREAST CANCER, BIOMINERALIZATION DISORDERS AND BONE METASTASES: A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Bone metastases are the most common and hard-to-treat complication of BC. About 70% of patients with metastatic BC have distant bone relapses during the disease. BC always leads to the death of patients within 5-10 years, and this statistic has not changed in the last 2-3 decades. The work aims to carry out a bibliometric analysis of the interrelationships of BC, processes of biomineralization (calcification), and metastases of BC to bone tissue. The authors searched electronic databases such as PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for the period 1973-2023 using key terms such as "breast cancer," "calcification," and "bone metastases." For bibliometric analysis, an online platform for monitoring and analyzing international scientific research using visualization tools and current citation metrics SciVal (Scopus), and a tool for building and visualizing bibliometric networks VOSviewer, were used. The authors used Scopus database bibliometric tools to analyze the year, source, type of study, subject area, and country of the publication. The VOSviewer system from the University of Leiden (https://www.vosviewer.com/download) was used to generate and visualize the bibliometric network. We found and examined 103 publications in the Scopus database using the keywords "breast cancer," "calcification," and "bone metastases" for the period 1973-2023. The results of the bibliometric analysis indicate that the number of publications on the specified subject has grown significantly (with small fluctuations) over the past 20 years, indicating scientists' interest in the problem and ways to solve it. The complex relationship between pathological biomineralization, breast cancer, and bone metastases is being actively studied by scientists, mainly from the United States of America, Germany, and Italy. Using the tool for building and visualizing bibliometric networks VOSviewer of publication activity for the period 1973-2023 in the researched topics of BC with calcification, we identified four chronological stages, which include: 1) radiological and biochemical research methods, 2) research on the effectiveness of diagnostics and treatment, including .h pathomorphological assessment of pathology, 3) fundamental studies of bone and mineral metabolism, 4) a practically oriented period of research. We also divided the identified publications into six thematic clusters: 1) application of radiological methods, 2) bone and mineral metabolism in conditions of pathology, 3) clinical diagnosis and prediction of the course of related pathology, 4) biomaterials and nanotechnology, 5) chemotherapy of oncopathology and its consequences, 6) fundamental molecular genetic research.

Keywords

• breast cancer
• calcification
• bone metastases
• bibliometry
• scopus
• vosviewer