Adherent-invasive Escherichia coli (AIEC) is considered a central pathogen in Crohn’s disease (CD), as it was first identified in 1998 in an ileal biopsy from a CD patient and has received extensive attention worldwide, but there is currently a lack of quantitative evaluation of the literature in this field. This study aims to provide a bibliometric analysis of AIEC in CD research over the past 25 years. Publications on AIEC in CD research from 1999 to 2025 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Bibliometric analysis was conducted using VOSviewer (1.6.18), RStudio (version 4.0), and HistCite (version 12.03.17) to visualize by author, country, institution, journal, reference, and keywords. A total of 250 articles were analyzed. Overall, the number of annual publications in this field has increased since 2007, with noticeable fluctuations. Barnich Nicolas published the most articles, 66, and has a high impact in the field of AIEC in CD research. The most cited author within this data set by global citation score was Arlette Darfeuille-Michaud. Among countries and institutions, France and Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA) had the highest number of publications. The journal with the most publications is Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. The most frequent keyword was “adhesion”. Over the past 25 years, France has led the rapid growth in AIEC research. Furthermore, according to trend topic analysis, the prevalence of AIEC in CD continues to be the central research theme. Our study provides valuable insights into AIEC research, supporting international collaboration to advance AIEC research in CD. This study provides a visual overview of the field of AIEC in CD.
Abdelhadi et al. (2026) studied this question.