Mapping the Impact of Antimicrobial Resistance on Regeneration: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Microbiome–Immunity–Tissue Repair Axis
Aziza Omari, Nurlan Sadykov, Bakhytzhan Seksenbaev, Alla Kim, Karlygash Akpayeva, Assem Dossanova
A
BSTRACT
Background:
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is usually framed as a therapeutic failure of infection control, yet the literature increasingly suggests a broader systems-level consequence: antimicrobial pressure can reshape host-associated microbiomes, perturb immune signaling, and alter the biological conditions required for tissue repair and regeneration. Despite rapid growth in research linking dysbiosis, inflammation, wound healing, stem-cell biology, and microbiome-targeted therapies, the structure of this interdisciplinary field has not been mapped bibliometrically.
Methods:
A bibliometric analysis was conducted on a user-supplied, deduplicated dataset merging Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection records. The final corpus contained 237 unique documents retrieved with predefined queries combining AMR/antibiotic terms with microbiome, regeneration/tissue repair, and inflammation/immune–response concepts. Descriptive performance indicators, citation analysis, source productivity, author–keyword co-occurrence, trend–topic analysis, and co-citation mapping were performed. Because the supplied merged spreadsheet contained incomplete affiliation and cited-reference fields for many Scopus-origin records, institutional, country, and co-citation analyses were performed on the subset with available metadata.
Results:
The corpus spanned 2021–2026 and comprised 237 documents published in 162 sources by 1763 identifiable authors. A total of 5625 citations were recorded (mean: 23.7 citations/document), and 233 papers were multiauthored, indicating a highly collaborative domain. Output increased from 38 papers in 2021 to 72 in 2025, equivalent to a compound annual growth rate of 17.3% across 2021–2025; 2026 remained a partial year. Articles (48.5%) and reviews (44.7%) dominated the corpus. The leading journals were International Journal of Molecular Sciences (
Conclusion:
This field is expanding quickly but remains conceptually fragmented. Its intellectual core is organized less around explicit AMR terminology than around microbial ecology, chronic wound biofilms, mucosal repair, and microbiome-directed therapeutic strategies. Future work should integrate resistance surveillance, microbiome preservation or restoration, immune-state profiling, and regenerative endpoints to reposition antimicrobial stewardship as part of tissue-repair science.