Association between intestinal microbiome and inflammatory bowel disease: Insights from bibliometric analysis

The gut microbiome is highly linked to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A total of 3890 publications related to the two terms from 2000 to 2020 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection to study the association from a bibliometric perspective. Publications on this topic have grown rapidly since 2008. The United States and Harvard University are the country and institution with the largest number of publications, respectively. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases is the most productive journal with 211 published articles. The most influential journal in this field is Gut with 13,359 citations. The co citation analysis of references showed that the IBD-related topics with the highest focus are gut micro biota, metagenomics, bacterial community, fecal microbiota transplantation, probiotics, and colitis-associated colorectal cancer. Keyword cluster and keyword burst analyses showed that gut microbiota, metagenomics, and fecal microbiota transplantation are currently the most researched topics in the field of IBD. The literature in this field is mainly distributed between alterations of the intestinal microbiota, microbial metabolites, and related host signaling pathways. Probiotic treatment also frequently appears in literature. This bibliometric analysis can guide future research and promote the development of the field of gut microbiome and IBD.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Research Network of Computational and Structural Biotechnology. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

The gut microbiome is closely associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This study used bibliometric analysis to examine the association between the two terms by analyzing 3890 publications from 2000 to 2020. The results showed a rapid growth in publications on this topic since 2008, with the United States and Harvard University being the most productive country and institution, respectively. The journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases had the highest number of published articles, while Gut was the most influential journal with the highest citation count. The most focused IBD-related topics identified through co-citation analysis were gut microbiota, metagenomics, bacterial community, fecal microbiota transplantation, probiotics, and colitis-associated colorectal cancer. Keyword cluster and burst analyses revealed that current research in the field of IBD mainly focuses on gut microbiota, metagenomics, and fecal microbiota transplantation. The literature in this field primarily explores alterations of the intestinal microbiota, microbial metabolites, and related host signaling pathways, with frequent mentions of probiotic treatment. This bibliometric analysis provides insights for future research and the development of the gut microbiome and IBD field.