Primary healthcare is the first line of defense for the containment of COVID-19 pandemic. Primary healthcare has been studied extensively by academic circles in various countries during the pandemic, but the focuses vary across these studies due to differences in primary healthcare systems in different countries.
To understand the advances, hotspots, trends and differences of primary care-related research at home and abroad during the COVID-19 epidemic, and to provide a reference for further research in this field.
Primary healthcare-related studies published during the COVID-19 pandemic (between January 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022) were searched in databases of CNKI and Web of Science Core Collection on July 5, 2022, and 282 from the former database and 1 755 from the latter were included. CiteSpace was used for visualization analysis to provide a graphic visualization of co-occurrence networks of authors, keywords and keywords clusters, to perform a timeline analysis, and to detect keywords with bursts.
The number of publications in China grew fast at the beginning of the pandemic, then the growth gradually decreased, and tended to level off at the late stage. In contrast, relevant research started later in foreign countries, but the number of relevant publications maintained high-speed growth as of the study time. The major author cooperation forms were inter-small teams cooperation and inter-individual cooperation, and no large-scale inter-team cooperation was found. The hotspots of domestic research focus on the systems, the exploration of mechanisms and management practices related to pandemic prevention and control, while international research focuses on changes in healthcare-seeking patterns and the satisfaction of patients' medical needs under the influence of the pandemic. Psychological problems related to the pandemic were concerned by both domestic and international research.
Domestic and foreign studies have similarities and different focuses. To continuous refine and diversify domestic research, it is suggested to learn international experience, pay attention to the construction of relevant research forces, improve the knowledge system in this field, and actively use information technology to improve the primary care system amid the pandemic.
Intermittent fasting refers to the eating pattern in which the individual abstains from eating food for a certain period during a day or week. As research deepens, intermittent fasting has been shown to play an important role in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases.
We aimed to provide a visualization analysis of the research hot spots and trends in international intermittent fasting studies over the past decade, in order to provide references and basis for future relevant research.
Existing studies on intermittent fasting published from January 2010 to April 2022 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection on April 26, 2022. CiteSpace was used to examine the distribution of disciplines, authors and institutions cooperation, high-frequency keywords, and keywords with citation bursts of the included literature, and finally relevant maps were created.
A total of 2 786 articles were ultimately included. The number of these publications showed an increasing trend year by year from 2010 to 2022, although the global research level remained uneven. The country with the highest number of publications was the United States (n=650), the institution with the highest number of publications was the University of Illinois (n=49), and the author with the most publications was Professor Krista A Varady of the University of Illinois (n=26). The high-frequency keywords included weight loss, intermittent fasting, obesity, insulin resistance, metabolism, caloric restriction, gene expression, circadian rhythms, and diet. The research themes were renamed as food intake restriction, circadian rhythms, weight control, metabolic-related diseases and other diseases, and related mechanisms after the cluster analysis. Burst keywords included time-restricted feeding, suprachiasmatic nucleus, mice, growth, and mortality.
The research hot spots of intermittent fasting are mainly focused on its relationship with biological rhythms/circadian rhythms, its effect on improving chronic diseases and other diseases, and sensitive genes and related mechanisms. Future research should focus on intermittent fasting in different populations such as children/adolescents, pregnant women, the elderly, and professional athletes/fitness enthusiasts, and clinically evaluate and compare the intervention effects and safety of different intermittent fasting patterns, ultimately forming a personalized intermittent fasting intervention model and exploring its biological mechanism.
