Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), also known as epidemiological hemorrhagic fever, is a zoonotic acute viral infectious disease (Cosgriff, 1989). HFRS is caused by Hantavirus (HV), with striped field mice (Apodemus agrarius) and stout rodents (Microtus striatus) being the main virus hosts. HFRS is globally prevalent and is endemic in Asia and Europe, including Russia, China, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Northern Europe, and the Balkans.

The HFRS prevalence is closely related to meteorological factors such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall (Bi et al., 2021; Douglas et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2022; Lv et al., 2023). The warm season is favorable for rodent breeding and they are more active, which increases their chances of contact with humans, thus heightening the virus transmission risk (Donalisio and Peterson, 2011). At a high temperature, the virus survival time may be shortened; however, HV more likely spreads as aerosols (Vapalahti et al., 2010). At suitable temperatures, virus reproduction may be accelerated, thereby increasing the likelihood of virus variation and evolution, which indicates that temperature may affect virus variation and evolution (Fay et al., 2021).

Rainfall is also highly correlated with the HFRS prevalence. A high rainfall increases vegetation growth and rodent density, thus elevating the chances of human contact with infected rodents. Floods and droughts alter the abundance and distribution of rodents through migration (Bodmer et al., 2018). Flooding may deteriorate rodent habitats, leading to the migration of rodents to human habitation and thus increasing the virus transmission risk (Sharnuud and Ameca, 2023). During droughts, a decrease is noted in the rodent predation risk, food availability, and rodent transmission risk rates (Yue and Lee, 2020).

Bibliometric analysis is a progressive method used to efficiently investigate the current status and trends within a specific subject or domain through statistical methods and visualization (Wang et al., 2021). This technique involves identifying key elements and extracting valuable insights from extensive data sets. Bibliometric software plays a vital role in scientometric analysis, where tools like CiteSpace and VOSviewer are widely favored for visualizing and analyzing trends and patterns in scientific literature. While the impact of meteorology on human health has emerged as a focal point of global scholarly research, comprehensive visual analysis is still lacking when it comes to studying the relationship between meteorology and the prevalence of HFRS from a global perspective (Khraishah et al., 2022; Romanello et al., 2022; Silenzi et al., 2023; Sri et al., 2023). This bibliometric analysis introduces a unique perspective by focusing on the intersection of meteorology and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), a niche that has been underexplored in the existing literature. Therefore, this study used CiteSpace and VOSviewer software to deeply explore the relevant literature from the perspective of visual analysis, and investigate the research hotspots, trends, and frontiers of the aforementioned relationship so as to provide a reference for future research and development.

This section will delve into the multiple layers of significance of the findings of this study. Firstly, we will analyze the correlation between meteorological factors and the transmission of HFRS. Subsequently, we will discuss the implications of the research findings for public health policies and disease prevention strategies.

This is the first study to systematically present the global research status, research hotspots, development trends, and research frontiers of meteorology and HFRS research in the past 30 years from the perspective of bibliometric analysis through CiteSpace and VOSviewer software. The present study constructed a detailed visual map to comprehensively understand meteorology and HFRS research. Through literature review, two similar studies (Kumar and Markscheffel, 2016; Wei et al., 2022) were identified; however, these studies focused on the global perspective of Hantavirus, whereas our research offers an in-depth analysis within a specific field (meteorology and HFRS).

Based on the literature search using WOS core collection, the first research result was published in 1992 (Hung et al., 1992). From 1992 to 2006, this field was in the initial exploration stage, and the research results were rarely presented as an academic article. From 2007 to 2019, the researchers were increasing, and so, the number of publications was increasing. This was related to the heightening of attention and strengthening of the impact of meteorological factors on human diseases and health. Since 2020, the number of publications has been declining, with one of the key reasons possibly attributed to the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to challenges in conducting various experiments and research on-site (Sohrabi et al., 2021; Naseer et al., 2022). Additionally, both public and private incentives swiftly redirected resources towards COVID-19 emergency-related research areas, displacing many research fields not directly linked to the pandemic outbreak (Weiner et al., 2020; Riccaboni and Verginer, 2022). As the global COVID-19 pandemic situation has been gradually controlled and the global economy has gradually recovered, active research in this field will be initiated in the future.

In total, 79 countries worldwide have conducted studies investigating the relationship between meteorology and HFRS. One unexpected finding was the high concentration of research from the United States and China, accounting for over 60% of the publications, indicating a potential concentration of expertise and resources in these regions. The high mediation centrality in this research field was mainly concentrated in the United States (0.72), followed by England, France, and other European and American countries, which indicates that these countries have close cooperation with foreign countries. Although China (89 articles) and Australia (30 articles) ranked second and third in the number of publications, respectively, their mediation centrality was low. This indicated that the research quality or practical effect of research results from China and Australia was relatively low, and international cooperation was little. Their research results were not widely disseminated all over the world. Regarding the relationship between the number of publications and the cooperation map, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention had the highest number of publications (24 articles), with the highest mediation centrality of institution (0.24). The second institution with the highest number of publications was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-USA. This demonstrates the international academic influence of the aforementioned two institutions. Although the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranked third in terms of the number of publications, its mediation centrality was <0.1, confirming the need for further strengthening of the cooperation between institutions. Based on the analysis of authors and co-cited authors, only 7 papers were published by the same author in this field, and the highest number of co-cited authors was only 55 times. These data indeed indicated that relatively little cooperation and communication between authors in the research field. Moreover, scholars with extensive influence and leadership were lacking. This situation may have limited the depth and breadth of academic research, leading to a relatively gradual development of the field. To promote the progress of academic research in this field, scholars must focus more on cooperation and communication.

Keyword co-occurrence analysis and cluster analysis offered an in-depth understanding of the study topics and focus areas. In this study, the top three topics of meteorological and HFRS research were as follows: dengue field represented by “transmission,” “temperature,” “risk,” “disease” and other keywords; dechlorane plus is the second topic represented by “polybrominated diphenyl ethers,” “atmospheric deposition,” “brominated flame retardants” and other keywords. The third topic is bank voles, which are represented by keywords such as “population dynamics,” “time series analysis,” and “reservoir.” Based on the timeline spectrum of the keyword cluster analysis, we further found that dengue clustering had a good temporal continuity and gained high attention. The reason for this phenomenon may be that both dengue fever and HFRS show clinical symptoms such as hemorrhage and kidney damage, and in the prevention and control of the epidemic, mosquito control and rodent control are important means of patriotic health campaigns. Worldwide, dengue outbreaks often cause major outbreaks, and even individual cities declare public health emergencies in order to contain the development of the epidemic (Kularatne and Dalugama, 2022; Bonna et al., 2023; Parveen et al., 2023).

In order to further explore the relationship between meteorology and HFRS, study the development trend and mutation point of this subject field, and determine the potential research direction, we conducted emergent word analysis to show the words with a high frequency or use frequency over a certain period. From the annual change of emergent words, the duration of emergence of the two keywords “genetic identification” and “el nino” is as long as 10 years. This indicated that during that emergence period, the themes represented by these words “genetic identification” (Khaiboullina et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2007) and “el nino” (Bi et al., 2005; Xiao et al., 2013) were global research hotspots. Additionally, the emergence words gradually changed from “P. maniculatus,” “epidemics,” “population dynamics,” and “risk” to “temperature,” “meteorological factors,” and “P. hantavirus” in the past decade, which illustrates the constant switching of research hotspots. However, the main keywords that are currently still in the emergence stage are “temperature,” “meteorological factors,” and “P. hantavirus.” This further suggests that these keywords represent the emerging research frontiers and future development direction in this field. While our analysis indicates potential emerging research themes, these should be considered as preliminary and subject to further validation as the field continues to evolve.

Given the dynamic nature of climate and its profound effects on vector-borne diseases, future research should delve into the long-term impacts of climate change on the epidemiology of HFRS. This could involve developing predictive models that account for shifting weather patterns and their influence on rodent populations and hantavirus transmission. Additionally, interdisciplinary collaborations could be fostered to explore innovative public health strategies aimed at mitigating the risks associated with climate-sensitive diseases like HFRS. The integration of remote sensing technologies, advanced statistical methods, and machine learning algorithms may offer new insights into the complex interplay between meteorological factors and HFRS incidence.

The study limitations should not be overlooked. First of all, in order to avoid the differences in literature collection, the present study only included literature retrieved from the WOS core collection and did not search the literature included in other databases. This inevitably resulted in literature omission. While our study presents robust findings, we acknowledge the possibility of citation biases within the identified research clusters, which could influence the visibility and perceived impact of certain research themes. Secondly, bibliometrics cannot completely and accurately reflect the actual quality and influence of academic papers. This is because various factors, such as academic environment, academic norms, and academic evaluation mechanisms, may affect citations. Thirdly, bibliometric studies are assessed based on published academic papers, which may not accurately and comprehensively capture the latest research trends and new directions. Finally, while CiteSpace software excels in generating and visualizing scientific knowledge graphs, it may not be as powerful as other specialized tools for more in-depth data analysis, such as text mining and sentiment analysis. Although VOSviewer software offers basic visualization options, there may be certain limitations in terms of customization and personalization. Users may not be able to fully customize according to their own needs, resulting in visualization results that are not intuitive or do not align with research requirements.

This study, through comprehensive bibliometric analysis, has unveiled global trends and hotspots in the research on the relationship between meteorology and HFRS. Building upon these findings, we draw conclusions and discuss their implications for research and practices in related fields.

This study used bibliometric methods to provide the first comprehensive and systematic overview of the research progress, status, trends, hotspots and frontiers of the relationship between meteorology and HFRS. Since the first study on the relationship between meteorology and HFRS was reported in 1992, the field has been developing continuously in the past 30 years. Globally, although several small clusters of author cooperation have been formed, the cooperation among scholars, institutions and countries needs to be further strengthened. The three topics of “temperature,” “meteorological factors” and “P. hantavirus” are likely to become the emerging research frontiers and development directions in the future, and need to be paid attention to by scholars. However, the topics identified in this study as potential emerging research frontiers warrant continued monitoring and research to confirm their long-term significance and impact within the field. This study not only presents a pioneering bibliometric evaluation of the relationship between meteorology and HFRS, but also offers valuable information for the global health research field. It is expected to have a profound impact on future epidemiological studies, disease prevention, and the formulation of public health policies.