Abstract
BACKGROUND: Several reviews on behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSDs) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have summarized the current state of this field, but global trends are unclear. OBJECTIVE: This study utilized CiteSpace to provide a global overview of the current state of research on AD and its BPSDs and to predict future research trends in the field. METHODS: Data were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. Bibliometric and cooccurrence analyses were performed using CiteSpace software. In total, 787 valid publications were included in the analysis. RESULTS: Publications on AD and BPSD have shown an increasing trend since 2002. The United States and the University of Toronto were the countries and institutions with the highest total number of publications, respectively. Japan and China were the second and third most influential in the field. Clive Ballard was the top author in terms of the number of publications. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease had the highest number of publications on this topic. Co-occurrence analysis showed that AD, behavioral symptoms, cognitive impairment, and early markers are hot topics in this area. Non-drug management of BPSDs, pharmacological treatment, and physiotherapy will be a hot topic in this field in the future. CONCLUSION: Our study visualized the relevant articles over the past 21 years to detect global hotspots and trends. Our findings may help researchers to identify research hotspots in this field and will help in the selection of appropriate research topics, while possibly leading to cross-regional cooperation.