Global research trends and emerging hotspots in probiotics and children's neurodevelopment: a bibliometric and visualized analysis (1998-2026, partial year).

Abstract

Research on the role of probiotics in children's neurodevelopment has expanded rapidly, yet a quantitative synthesis of this interdisciplinary field is lacking. This study aimed to map global research trends, identify key contributors, and reveal emerging hotspots in the field of probiotics and children's neurodevelopment through bibliometric and visualized analysis. Publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1998 to 2026 (partial year, search conducted on 21 May 2026) were retrieved using a predefined search strategy combining terms related to probiotics, children, and neurodevelopment. After screening and deduplication, 1,684 documents were included. Bibliometric indicators, including annual publication trends, productive authors and journals, keyword co-occurrence networks, temporal trends in keyword frequency, and the top 15 most frequently cited references, were analyzed using the bibliometrix R package, igraph, ggplot2, and wordcloud. Common keyword synonyms were merged prior to network construction. Annual publication output increased steadily from 1998 to 2015 and accelerated sharply after 2020, reaching a peak in 2025. The most frequent publication venues included <i>Nutrients</i> and <i>Frontiers in Microbiology</i>. Keyword co-occurrence analysis revealed a core network centered on Gut Microbiota, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Probiotics, and Gut-Brain Axis, with ADHD emerging as a distinct and increasingly prominent node in the 2020-2026 period. Temporal trends in keyword frequency indicated a shift from broad descriptive associations toward more specialized terms such as Dysbiosis, Fecal Microbiota Transplantation, Neuroinflammation, and Metabolomics. Highly cited documents and the top 15 most frequently cited references were anchored by seminal works on the gut-brain axis and microbiome-behavior relationships, forming a stable intellectual base. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the research landscape in probiotics and children's neurodevelopment. The field is shifting from observational studies toward mechanism-oriented and interventional research, with ADHD and multi-omics approaches representing important emerging directions. As a single-database analysis, these findings should be interpreted with caution, and future studies should integrate additional databases to validate and extend them. Translational implications include stratifying patients by neurodevelopmental diagnosis and microbial profile, and testing mechanism-guided probiotic or synbiotic formulations in future trials. These findings offer useful guidance for researchers seeking to understand the structure of the field and identify promising areas for future investigation. The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-026-05105-2.