From Mechanisms to Medicine: Bibliometric Insights into Autophagy and Ferroptosis Research (2012-2024)

Background Autophagy and ferroptosis are important processes that control cell survival and death. They help keep the body's balance and respond to stress. Since ferroptosis was first described in 2012, researchers have been interested in how it works with autophagy. This interaction is especially important in diseases like cancer, brain disorders, and heart problems. In these diseases, autophagy and ferroptosis can work together or against each other, leading to complex biological effects. Because many studies are being done on this topic, it is crucial to organize the knowledge and understand research trends. Bibliometrics is a useful tool for this purpose. It uses numbers to analyze research, helping to identify popular topics, see how scientists collaborate, and predict future directions in the study of autophagy and ferroptosis.Methods This study used a bibliometric method to analyze academic papers on autophagy and ferroptosis. The papers were published between 2012 and 2024 in the Web of Science Core Collection. The search used topics are "autophagy," "ferroptosis," The study included peer-reviewed original research articles and reviews. It excluded conference abstracts and non-English publications. After gathering the data, we used mainly VOSviewer and CiteSpace software. They visualized publication trends, collaboration networks among countries and institutions, journal distributions, keyword clusters, co-citation analysis, and burst topics. This helped to fully map the scientific landscape of this field.Results We analyzed 2396 articles and found that research on autophagy and ferroptosis has grown a lot since 2016. The number of articles published each year went from 14 in 2016 to 823 in 2024, showing a growth rate of 66.4% per year. China published 77.8% of the articles, the United States published 11%. Together, in terms of authors, the collaboration between the United States and China is the closes. Important journals for this research are Frontiers in Pharmacology (impact factor 4.4), Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (impact factor 5.8), and Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy (impact factor 6.9). In terms of content, we found three main research areas: (1) how cells deal with oxidative stress and lipid metabolism (GPX4, ACSL4), (2) how autophagy is controlled (LC3, p62), and (3) how cells manage iron and die (TFRC, FTH1). Two key papers are Dixon et al.’s 2012 paper on ferroptosis, which has been cited more than 12,000 times, and Stockwell et al.’s paper on how autophagy and ferroptosis work together, cited over 5,000 times. Looking ahead, new hot topics from 2023 to 2025 are using the immune system to treat tumors and how autophagy and ferroptosis affect brain diseases.Conclusion This study uses bibliometrics to show how research on autophagy and ferroptosis has changed over the last ten years. It highlights a move from basic science to using these findings in medicine. The study shows that scientists have made big steps in understanding how oxidative stress, lipid metabolism, and iron balance work at the molecular level. Also, it finds that researchers around the world are working together, as seen in collaboration networks and key journals. New areas like tumor immunotherapy and neuroprotection are growing, suggesting that autophagy and ferroptosis could help treat diseases in the future. By giving a detailed map and useful insights based on data, this study helps researchers do better work in this field.