The past, present, and future of adipose tissue browning and aging: A review combined with bibliometrics and bioinformatics of 2527 documents published over the past four decades

Aging is one of the factors for the decline in adipose tissue browning and, consequently, age-related metabolic disorders. Metabolic disorders will in turn accelerate aging and lead to a vicious circle. Therefore, the research on the reduced browning of adipose tissue that occurs with aging, that is, adipose tissue browning aging, is necessary and of great significance for the development of metabolically healthy aging. In this study, we performed a bibliometric analysis of 2527 published articles on aging of adipose tissue browning and created a panorama from different levels so that readers could quickly understand the current state of the research field. The burst analysis and timeline analysis were used to identify the research frontiers in the field, and the newly published documents were discussed and summarized. In addition, we performed bioinformatic analysis on the GEO-derived dataset to identify the altered genes and enriched pathways associated with browning during aging. Combined with bibliometric analysis, the most concerned pathway was identified as adipogenesis, and the most concerned genes were PPARG, ADIPOQ and TG. In summary, this study provided a comprehensive picture of the current status of adipose tissue browning and aging research and identified research frontiers. Finally, the pathways and genes of most interest were identified by combined bioinformatic analysis.