Emerging trends and focus for the link between the gastrointestinal microbiome and kidney disease

Abstract

The clinical value of the relationship between gastrointestinal microbiome imbalance and its corresponding interventions with kidney disease is emerging. This study describes the hotspots and evolution of gastrointestinal microbiome and kidney disease research over the past three decades by scientific collaboration networks and finally predicts future trends in the field through bibliometric analysis and visualization studies. CiteSpace was used to explore the original articles from January 1990 to August 2021 to visualize the knowledge network of journals, countries, institutions, authors, references, and keywords in this field. Publications were extracted from Web of Science Core Collection database using the terms "gastrointestinal microbiome" and "kidney disease" (and their synonyms in MeSH). A total of 2145 publications with 93880 references in 102 journals were included in the analyses. The number of studies combining gastrointestinal microbiomes with kidney diseases has increased significantly over the past two decades. The United States is the leading country in the number of documents, and the leading institution is the Cleveland Clinic. The most landmark articles in the field are on chronic renal failure, L-Carnitin, and cardiovascular disease. The pathogenesis of uremia toxin is an emerging trend in gastrointestinal microbiomes and kidney diseases. In addition, probiotic or synbiotic supplements have strong clinical value in adjusting abnormal intestinal symbiotic environments. This study demonstrates a growing understanding of the interaction between gut microbiota and kidney disease over time. Using microbial supplements to improve the living conditions of kidney disease patients is a promising and hot research focus. Based on publications extracted from the database, this study may provide clinicians and researchers with valuable information to identify potential collaborators and partner institutions and better predict their dynamic progression.

Keywords: bibliometric; gastrointestinal microbiome; kidney disease; probiotics; research focus.

Figure 1

Workflow diagram of the publications search, screening, and analysis.

Figure 2

Co-institution knowledge map in the field of gastrointestinal microbiome and kidney disease during 1990-2021. (A) Nodes show in the form of annual rings that the annual ring width represents how many papers the institution publishes in a given year. The more papers are published, the wider the ring is in that year. And the brighter the node is, the newer the publication. (B) Total distribution comparison of the top ten most published countries and centralities in the field of gastrointestinal microbiomes and kidney diseases. (C) Proportion of the top ten most published institutions.

Figure 3

Co-country analysis in the field of gastrointestinal microbiomes and kidney diseases during 1990-2021. (A) Nodes show in the form of annual rings that the annual ring width represents how many papers the country publishes in a given year and the color. Nodes marked with purple circles represent convincible betweenness centrality, which stands for the importance of a certain object, and the warmer color the node is, the newer the publish is. The more papers are published, the wider the ring is in that year. (B) Total distribution comparison of the top ten most published countries and centralities in the field of gastrointestinal microbiomes and kidney diseases. (C) Proportion of the top ten most published countries. (D) Annual publications of the top three productive countries.

Figure 4

Co-citation knowledge map in the field of gastrointestinal microbiomes and kidney diseases during 1990-2021. Each node represents a research cluster, the size of the node represents the frequency of their occurrence, the line between nodes represents the degree of relevance, the thickness of lines indicates the strength of cooperation. The color of the lines and nodes corresponds to the publication time and the warmer color the color is, the newer the publish is.