Open AccessArticle
Gut Health in Veterinary Medicine: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Literature
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Department of Veterinary Sciences, University of Turin, 10095 Grugliasco, Italy
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Department of Surgery and Pathology, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 Alicante, Spain
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Clive J. C. Phillips
Received: 1 June 2021
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Revised: 23 June 2021
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Accepted: 1 July 2021
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Published: 3 July 2021
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.