Bibliometric analysis of human microbiota-associated animal model (2005-2025)

The research on human microbiota-associated (HMA) animal models is an important tool for studying the human microbiome and holds great potential for elucidating disease mechanisms and microbe-based therapeutic interactions. However, a systematic bibliometric assessment of this field has been limited.

This study employed bibliometric methods, retrieving relevant publications published between 2005 and 2025 from the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and PubMed, and visualizing the data with VOSviewer and CiteSpace.

The analysis revealed a continuous upward trend in the number of publications on this topic. The United States and its research institutions contributed the most and maintained close collaborations with multiple countries. The majority of the articles appeared in journals such as Gut Microbes, Microbiome, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Keyword and highly-cited reference analyses focused on the application of these models in investigating disease mechanisms and therapeutic exploration, particularly for metabolic, gastrointestinal, oncological, and neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, the impact of modeling factors such as diet and host genetics on the models has also attracted attention.

HMA animal models have become a core platform linking clinical and basic microbiology research, demonstrating unique advantages in recapitulating disease-associated microbial features and phenotypes. Nevertheless, because these models are essential for testing causal links between microbiota and disease, methodological standardization and procedural refinement are needed to enhance reproducibility and clinical applicability.