Gut health in veterinary medicine: A bibliometric analysis of the literature

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.