Gut Health in Veterinary Medicine: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Literature

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Gut health has been a main topic in veterinary medicine research after the ban on the use of antimicrobial growth promoters.

Gut health has been defined as absence/prevention/avoidance of gastrointestinal disease so that the animal is able to perform its physiological functions.

A bibliometric analysis is a set of statistical methods used to explore trends in the scientific literature such as number of publications, most prolific countries and main research areas to highlight publication dynamics and gaps of knowledge.

In this case, a bibliometric analysis was performed on veterinary gut health using the database Web of Science and the R package Bibliometrix.

A total of 1696 documents were retrieved between 2000 and 2020, showing an increase of 22.4% in the number of annual publications.

Pigs (34.8%), poultry (chicken, duck, turkey and quail—33.9%) and aquaculture (fishes, crustaceans and frog—15.0%) were the most studied species while a scarce number of publications was found on felines, cows, horses, rodents, goats and sheep.

China (24.7%), USA (17.2%) and Canada (5.7%) were the most productive countries.

Three main research lines aimed to explore animal nutrition, prevention of inflammatory diseases and microbiota composition were identified.

This study will help drive future research on the topic.

ABSTRACT: Gut health is a recent relevant research topic in veterinary medicine and it has been shown to be associated with better zootechnical performances and animal welfare.

A bibliometric analysis was performed to explore publication trends, dynamics and possible knowledge gaps in this field in the last twenty years (2000–2020).

The database Web of Science was searched and the results were analyzed by the R package Bibliometrix.

A total of 1696 documents were retrieved in the evaluated period, showing a constant annual growth in the number of publications of 22.4%.

These articles focused mainly on pigs (34.8%), poultry (chicken, duck, turkey and quail—33.9%) and aquaculture (fishes, crustaceans and frog—15.0%) while a scarce number was found on felines, cows, horses, rodents, goats and sheep.

China was the most productive country (24.7%) followed by the USA (17.2%) and Canada (5.7%).

Keyword’s analysis showed that the main research lines aimed to explore animal nutrition, prevention of inflammatory diseases and microbiota composition.

This study shows a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the evolution of veterinary gut health research that will help to drive future investigations on this topic.