From Mechanical Cues to Lung Injury: Mapping the Global Landscape and Frontiers of Mechanoregulation Through Bibliometrics and LDA Analysis.

Pulmonary cells continuously experience mechanical forces, yet the rapid expansion of mechanotransduction research has fragmented the knowledge base and obscured how research priorities have shifted over time. We therefore mapped the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of pulmonary mechanoregulation using bibliometric analysis and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). A total of 1896 articles and reviews published during 2000-2025 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection and analysed with CiteSpace and LDA. Annual output increased from fewer than 60 publications per year before 2012 to more than 160 in 2024. Citation, co-occurrence, clustering and burst analyses showed a transition from macroscopic injury paradigms, including cyclic stretch and alveolar overdistension, towards matrix stiffness. Yes-associated protein/transcriptional coactivator with PDZ-binding motif (YAP/TAZ) signalling, mechanosensitive ion channels and mechano-immunology. LDA resolved 15 latent topics; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and macrophage activation was the largest topic (254 documents), while temporal modelling showed increasing prominence of macrophage-centred fibrosis and viral-associated lung injury and declining emphasis on classical mechanical stretch. These findings define major knowledge gaps at the biomechanics-immunology interface and provide a quantitative roadmap for prioritizing biomimetic models, multi-omics integration and selective mechanotherapeutic strategies.