Bibliometric and visual analysis on the association between inflammatory bowel disease and Clostridium difficile infection

Abstract:

[Background] The recent years have witnessed the increasing incidence of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which has attracted widespread attention from scholars. China started the research late in this field, while there were a large number of patients. Learning from international research on IBD combined with CDI is of great significance for improving China's research in this field. [Objective] To help researchers grasp the research topics, directions, hotspots, and frontiers in the correlation between IBD and CDI by bibliometric and visual analysis. [Methods] The articles about CDI and IBD were searched against the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) in the Web of Science (WOS) and CNKI. CiteSpace 6.2.2r was employed to analyze the authors, research institutions, countries, and keyword co-occurrence, citations, and journal co-citation, and the results were visualized. [Results] After data retrieval and duplicate checking, 1 030 articles published by WOS and 80 articles by CNKI were included for analysis. On a global scale, the United States was the country with the most publications. The major research institutions included Harvard University, University of California System, and Mayo Clinic. The prolific authors included Khanna S, Shen B, and Ananthakrishnan AN. High-frequency keywords included Inflammatory bowel disease, Ulcerative colitis, Clostridium difficile, Clostridium difficile infection, and Crohn's disease. The articles were clustered into the categories of Diarrhea, Ulcerative colitis, Probiotics, Pouchitis, Gut microbiota, Fecal microbiota transplantation, Depression, Entamoeba histolytica, Pseudomembranous colitis, Clostridium difficile, and Clindamycin. In China, the major research institutions included Southern Medical University and Hebei Medical University, and the prolific authors included WANG Pu and WANG Siqi. The high-frequency keywords included Fecal bacteria transplantation, Clostridium difficile, Gut microbiota, Risk factors, and Crohn's disease. The articles in Chinese were clustered into the categories of Clostridium difficile, Probiotics, Risk factors, Diarrhea, and Fecal bacteria transplantation. [Conclusion] The CiteSpace-based visual analysis of the correlation between CDI and IBD shows that this research direction still receives the attention from medical institutions and researchers worldwide. The keywords of Diarrhea and Fecal microbiota transplantation represent the research hotspots in the WOS and CNKI, respectively.