Global landscape and knowledge structure of research on pancreatitis and gut microbiota: a bibliometric analysis...

The research on pancreatitis and gut microbiota has expanded rapidly in recent years. Growing evidence suggests that gut dysbiosis may play an important role in pancreatic inflammation, intestinal barrier dysfunction and disease progression, but global research landscape, major contributors, knowledge structure and hotspots have not been fully defined.

Publications related to pancreatitis and gut microbiota were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus. The search was conducted on Jan 5, 2026, and covered studies published between 2006 and 2025. Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, CiteSpace and Microsoft Excel were used to analyze the annual publication trends, journal sources, authors, countries, institutions, cited articles, co-cited references, keyword co-occurrence, thematic clustering, and time evolution.

The annual number of publications increased markedly from 2006 to 2025, with sustained acceleration after 2020. Pre- and post-2020 comparison suggested a shift from early clinical and intervention-oriented topics toward more mechanism-based and translational research, including gut microbiota, immune regulation, and multi-omics approaches. China contributed the most publications, followed by the United States. Citation and co-citation analyses identified major thematic groups related to acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic homeostasis, dietary intervention, and microbiota-targeted research. Frequent keywords included human, gut microbiota, acute pancreatitis, intestinal flora, inflammation, dysbiosis, probiotics and chronic pancreatitis. Recent burst keywords were more closely related to bifidobacterium, short-chain fatty acids, metabolomics, acute lung injury, fecal analysis, and lipopolysaccharide, suggesting changing research attention toward mechanism-oriented and translational topics.

This bibliometric analysis provides a detailed overview of global studies on pancreatitis and gut microbiota from 2006 to 2025. The field has expanded rapidly, and bibliometric patterns suggest increasing attention to mechanistic and translational investigations. Some highly co-cited references were related to pancreatic cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, microbial metabolites, immune regulation, and host-microbe interactions rather than pancreatitis itself, reflecting the broader knowledge base of this research field. Acute pancreatitis remained the most studied topic, while chronic pancreatitis, microbial metabolites, host response, and microbiota-targeted approaches gained increasing attention in recent years. Future research may shift from descriptive microbiota profiling to mechanism-oriented and translational studies.