Global research trends in microbiome-gut-brain axis during 2009–2018: a bibliometric and visualized study

Abstract

Background The pathways and mechanism by which associations between the gut microbiome and the brain, termed the microbiome-gut-brain axis (MGBA), are manifest but remain to be fully elucidated. This study aims to use bibliometric analysis to estimate the global activity within this rapidly developing field and to identify particular areas of focus that are of current relevance to the MGBA during the last decade (2009–2018). Methods The current study uses the Scopus for data collection. We used the key terms “microbiome-gut-brain axis” and its synonyms because we are concerned with MGBA per se as a new concept in research rather than related topics. A VOSviewer version 1.6.11 was used to visualize collaboration pattern between countries and authors, and evolving research topics by analysis of the term co-occurrence in the title and abstract of publications. Results Between 2009 and 2018, there were 51,504 published documents related to the microbiome, including 1713 articles related to the MGBA: 829 (48.4%) original articles, 658(38.4%) reviews, and 226 (13.2%) other articles such as notes, editorials or letters. The USA took the first place with 385 appearances, followed by Ireland ( n = 161), China ( n = 155), and Canada ( n = 144).The overall citation h-index was 106, and the countries with the highest h-index values were the USA (69), Ireland (58), and Canada (43). The cluster analysis demonstrated that the dominant fields of the MGBA include four clusters with four research directions: “modeling MGBA in animal systems”, “interplay between the gut microbiota and the immune system”, “irritable bowel syndrome related to gut microbiota”, and “neurodegenerative diseases related to gut microbiota”. Conclusions This study demonstrates that the research on the MGBA has been becoming progressively more extensive at global level over the past 10 years. Overall, our study found that a large amount of work on MGBA focused on immunomodulation, irritable bowel syndrome, and neurodevelopmental disorders. Despite considerable progress illustrating the communication between the gut microbiome and the brain over the past 10 years, many issues remain about their relevance for therapeutic intervention of many diseases.

Mapping the situation of research on coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19): a preliminary bibliometric analysis during the early stage of the outbreak

“…All relevant data to COVID-19 were downloaded from the Scopus. In this study, we analyzed the retrieved data through Excel to collect the following bibliometric indicators based on previous similar studies [ 40 – 43 ]: (1) publication output; (2) document type; (3) country/region; (4) institute; (5) journal; (6) h -index; and (7) citation.…”

The global state of research in pain management of osteoarthritis (2000–2019)

“…It provides a way to seize development in a certain field and to compare the contributions of scholars, journals, institutions, and countries. In recent years, bibliometric analysis has been successfully applied in several research areas to assist the development of clinical policies and guidelines, and also been used in evaluating research trends in electronic health, [ 21 ] bio-receptor, [ 22 ] microbiome-gut-brain axis [ 23 ] and stem cell. [ 24 ] Therefore, we conduct a brief discussion of pain management research in knee OA, unmasking trends that could be helpful for gaining a wide knowledge of global developments in the field and future directions.…”

Bibliometric Analysis of Dendritic Epidermal T Cell (DETC) Research From 1983 to 2019

“…Bibliometric analysis, a novel and scientific information visualization method used worldwide to evaluate the knowledge structure, development, and trends within a topic both quantitatively and qualitatively, is now widely used in a variety of fields (44,45). The use of bibliometric analysis is still in the early stage in the immunology field and not many articles using it have been published outside of the tumor immunotherapy, microbiome, sepsis, and vaccine fields (46)(47)(48)(49). Here, we apply a bibliometric analysis of DETC research publications (prior to September 17 2019) in terms of numbers of publications and citations, journal, country, and international cooperation, author and co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence cluster.…”