A bibliometric analysis of global research on short chain fatty acids in neurological diseases

The interest on short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) regulating the progress of neurological diseases has gained significant attention in recent years. This bibliometric analysis aimed to provide insights into the current state and future trends of global research on SCFAs in neurological research.

To analysis the general trend of publications, the scientific output in this field from 1995 to 2024 was first retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and PubMed with SCFAs-related and neurological diseases related terms as the subjects. Based on above publication analysis, rapid development stage was marked as 2016 to 2024 and 878 relevant original articles in rapid development stage was retrieved with the time limit from 2016 to 2024. Key bibliometric indicators were calculated and evaluated using CiteSpace with these 878 articles.

SCFAs are related to the occurrence and development of neurological diseases. China and the USA have contributed in a significant way to foster a better understanding on SCFAs in neurological diseases. The hot theme of research have gradually shifted from neurodegenerative diseases to psychical diseases. In the aspect of mechanism research, the current hotspot is inflammation. SCFAs are able to modulate oxidative stress and microglia maturation, morphology and function to intervene in the development of neurological diseases and thus SCFAs interventions are promising to treat neurological diseases. 2016 to 2024 is the fast-developing stage in this field. In this stage the publications dramatically increased and were of high quality.

SCFAs in neurological research will continue to be an active area in the near future. Future trends might be correlation analysis and neurotherapeutics of SCFAs on patients with psychical diseases and deeper mechanism research is still needed.