Trends and Development in Clinical Research of FDA-Approved Drugs Against Interleukin-1β: A Bibliometric Analysis.

Abstract Background Interleukin(IL)-1β is a promising target for many diseases such as atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer because it has been found to involve in the development of diseases. Anakinra, Canakinumab and Rilonacept were three Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs and used for inhibiting IL-1β. Our study aims to access the trends and development for IL-1β inhibitors using bibliometric analysis. Methods All publication records were obtained from databases Web of Science and Pubmed. Publishing characteristics including organization, author, journals and co-authorship, Keywords, co-occurrence network, related journals network were analyzed by VOSviewer 1.6.16 (by Leiden University) and Bibliometric package in R(4.0.5). Graph prism 8 was used to performed descriptive analysis of all data. Results 274 publications were enrolled in our study. Of the three drugs, anakinra has been extensively studied, with 130 publications related to it between 1997 and 2021. Clinical studies on IL-1β antagonists mainly focused on rheumatoid arthritis. Non-inflammatory diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer were also found in the related clinical research. The United States published the most articles in clinical research on IL-1β inhibitor and it was the country that participated in the most collaborations. Conclusion Targeting IL-1β was still a hot spot for clinical research in inflammatory diseases. As progresses are made in the field, Canakinumab and Rilonocept as two novel inhibitors, will increase in a similar trend to that of Anakinra. The number of studies about the inhibitors targeting IL-1β in inflammatory diseases will emerge more in the future. Cancer therapy might be the trend in the clinical studies of antagonizing IL-1β.