OBJECTIVETo investigate the current status of research on infantile cholestatic liver disease in China and future research trends.

METHODSA co-word analysis was performed in October 2016. Document retrieval and screening were performed in the Chinese databases CNKI and Wanfang Data using "cholestasis" and "infant" as key words. Excel 2010 was used to establish a co-occurrence matrix of high-frequency key words, and Ucinet 6.0 and Netdraw were used to develop a visualized network of these high-frequency key words.

RESULTSA total of 383 articles were included. The co-occurrence analysis showed that "infant" and "cholestasis" were the core of research in this field, and "infantile hepatitis syndrome", "neonate", "intrahepatic", "biliary atresia", "heredity and metabolism", "hepatitis", "cytomegalovirus", "jaundice", and "conjugated bilirubin" were main research topics. Most of the other articles focused on "parenteral nutrition", "hepatobiliary imaging", "gene mutation", and "liver biopsy". There were relatively few articles on surgical diagnostic techniques and treatment for this disease.

CONCLUSIONSThe research on infantile cholestatic liver disease in China focuses on etiology and differential diagnosis, and genetic diagnosis has become a hot topic in recent years. The research on treatment should be enhanced, and new diagnostic techniques are the research interest in future.