A Bibliometric Analysis Review of the Top 50 Most Cited Articles on Incretin-Based Therapy for Weight Reduction and Diabetes Management.

Abstract

The introduction of incretin-based therapy has brought a significant transformation in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity. It works by augmenting natural incretin hormones to enhance insulin secretion and suppress glucagon release in a glucose-dependent manner. The primary goal of this research was to identify the top 50 most cited articles in this field, explore the trends, recent developments and the future direction of the research in this field. This is a bibliometric analysis. The subjects consisted of the 50 most cited scientific publications that were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection on May 11, 2025. The research strategy used keywords related to incretin therapy, weight loss and type-2 diabetes. The research approach consisted of a database search combined with a quantitative assessment of publication metrics. The articles we identified were published between 1999 and 2023. Statistical analysis used IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 31 (Released 2025; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States) to calculate descriptive statistics including mean, standard deviation, median and frequencies for data summary. The 50 articles received an average of 473.44 citations with a citation range between 188 and 3,045. The majority of publications appeared in Q1 journals with impact factors ranging from 2.2 to 98.4 and Diabetes Care (28%) and The Lancet (14%) being the most prominent journals. Thirteen countries contributed, predominantly the United States (56%), followed by Denmark (10%). The analysis successfully identified the most influential literature, confirming the significant and growing impact of incretin-based therapy research. The field demonstrates a clear trend from GLP-1 agonists towards dual and triple receptor agonists, with research heavily published in high-impact journals and led by US-based, multi-author teams.