Global research trends of cell-free nucleic acids in obstetrics and gynecology during 2017-2021: a systematic review

Background Cell-free DNA, a suitable candidate biomarker forming an emerging field of non-invasive evaluation, has been detected for great clinical applications and increasingly used in obstetrics and gynecology. Objective To describe an intuitive global research trends of cfDNA related literature from a bibliometric perspective, and provide researchers with new research hotspots. Search strategy The literature form PubMed and Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database related to cfDNA from January 1 2017 to December 31 2021 were extracted for co-word and VOSviewer analysis, respectively. Study criteria We selected studies where cfDNA was applied for obstetrics and gynecology, i.e., prenatal diagnosis, preimplantation diagnosis, next generation sequencing technology, mosaicism detection or adverse pregnancy outcomes. Data collection and analysis Bibliographic Item Co-Occurrence Matrix Builder, gCLUTO software and VOSviewer were used to perform bibliometrics analysis. Main results Themes in the third quadrant of strategy diagram, including cell-free nucleic acid sequence analysis for non-invasive prenatal testing and genetic testing, the application of cfDNA in the fields of neoplasms genetics and diagnosis are immature themes which are considered newly emerging themes of cfDNA. VOSviewer results showed the global research trends of cfDNA including authors, institutions, countries, journals and research hotspots. Conclusion By analyzing the research hotspots related to cfDNA, immature themes and emerging hotspots deserve more attention and can be considered as hints when launching new research projects. The five major research hotspots could provide an insight into cfDNA research and valuable information for researchers to identify potential collaborators and partner institutions.