Bibliometric network analysis of glaucoma.

Elevated intraocular pressure is recognized as the principal risk factor for development of optic nerve head (ONH) injury. Lamina cribrosa (LC) cells and astrocytes are two types of cells in the ONH. We attempted to identify more target genes and predict their underlying molecular mechanisms. In this study, we performed meta-analysis of the data from two microarray sets containing samples from LC cells and astrocytes each. Our analysis indicated that 47 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) had been identified, and 24 of them were used to construct a bibliometric network with other related genes, including GSTT1 ENO2, CPE, PTN, PTGDS, IL6, MMP1, and EGFR. Further, our results predicted these genes might be involved in glaucoma development through Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, ErbB signaling pathway, and glioma and other cancer-related pathways. Therefore our study provides potential target genes and pathways for future therapeutic studies of glaucoma.