Abstract
BackgroundGastrointestinal microbiome has drawn an increasing amount of attention over the past decades. There is emerging evidence that the gut flora plays a major role in the pathogenesis of certain diseases. We aimed to analyze the evolution of gastrointestinal microbiome research and evaluate publications qualitatively and quantitatively.MethodsWe obtained a record of 2891 manuscripts published between 1998 and 2018 from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) of Thomson Reuters; this record was obtained on June 23, 2018. The WoSCC is the most frequently used source of scientific information. We used the term “Gastrointestinal Microbiomes” and all of its hyponyms to retrieve the record, and restricted the subjects to gastroenterology and hepatology. We then derived a clustered network from 70,169 references that were cited by the 2891 manuscripts, and identified 676 top co-cited articles. Next, we used the bibliometric method, CiteSpace V, and VOSviewer 1.6.8 to identify top authors, journals, institutions, countries, keywords, co-cited articles, and trends.ResultsWe identified that the number of publications on gastrointestinal microbiome is increasing over time. 112 journals published articles on gastrointestinal microbiome. The United States of America was the leading country for publications, and the leading institution was the University of North Carolina. Co-cited reference analysis revealed the top landmark articles in the field. Gut microbiota, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), probiotics, irritable bowel disease, and obesity are some of the high frequency keywords in co-occurrence cluster analysis and co-cited reference cluster analysis; indicating gut microbiota and related digestive diseases remain the hotspots in gut microbiome research. Burst detection analysis of top keywords showed that bile acid, obesity, and Akkermansia muciniphila were the new research foci.ConclusionsThis study revealed that our understanding of the link between gastrointestinal microbiome and associated diseases has evolved dramatically over time. The emerging new therapeutic targets in gut microbiota would be the foci of future research.
Highlights
Gastrointestinal microbiome has drawn an increasing amount of attention over the past decades
We obtained a record of 2891 manuscripts published between 1998 and 2018 from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) of Thomson Reuters; this record was obtained on June 23, 2018
Digestive Diseases and Sciences published the greatest number of articles on gut microbiome, followed by World Journal of Gastroenterology and Gut
Summary
Gastrointestinal microbiome has drawn an increasing amount of attention over the past decades. The human gastrointestinal flora is an essential organ that plays an important role in gastrointestinal and overall health Understanding of this organ has evolved significantly over the past decades due to the large quantity of impactful research on the gastrointestinal microbiome. 16S rRNA genes are bacteria’s small subunit molecules that include both conserved and variable regions that allow designing probes or primers to detect and identify bacteria, and specify a phylum, a group, a genus, or even a species [1]. These reflect that gut flora are not just commensal with human hosts, there is mutualism in the relationship between them
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