Bibliometrics and Bioinformatics Exploration of Research Hotspots and Key Targets in Comorbidity: Interstitial Lung Disease and Pulmonary Hypertension.

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) and pulmonary hypertension (PH) frequently coexist as comorbidities, leading to poor clinical outcomes and limited therapeutic options. Identifying important research hotspots and uncovering key comorbidity targets is essential for improving disease management and developing novel therapeutic strategies. This protocol retrieves relevant publications from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases, and uses CiteSpace and VOSviewer to map research hotspots and evolving trends. Subsequently, overlapping genetic targets associated with both diseases are identified from the GeneCards database. Protein-protein interaction networks are constructed using STRING to identify hub genes, and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis is performed using the R language to elucidate key signaling pathways. The results show that bibliometrics identifies the developmental trajectory of this interdisciplinary field from a macro perspective; bioinformatics analysis reveals FN1, IL6, and TNF as potential core comorbidity targets; and KEGG enrichment analysis indicates that immune-related pathways centered on PI3K-Akt and MAPK are deeply involved in the pathogenesis of the comorbidity. By integrating the two approaches, this protocol systematically delineates the development trajectory and research hotspots in ILD-PH comorbidity research, while preliminarily screening potential comorbidity targets and pathways. It provides direction and a computational basis for future experimental research and clinical validation. This integrated framework offers a reproducible methodology applicable to the study of other complex disease comorbidities.