Objective: To summarize recent progress in the inflammation and immunity research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children during 2002 to 2021, and to provide future directions. Methods: Literature review was conducted in May 2022, with the literature source of core collection of the Web of Science database. CiteSpace software was used for bibliometric analysis. A total of 4 458 literature was included. Results: In the past decade, the number of published articles increased rapidly, from 52 to 528. American has produced the highest number of articles ( n =2 016), followed by China with 407 papers published. The high frequency words included autism spectrum disorder, children, brain, autism, spectrum disorder. The high centrality keywords included schizophrenia, central nervous system, mental regression, multiple sclerosis, autoantibody. Recent researches in ASD primarily focused on the following three aspects:core symptoms and brain mechanism, gene environment interaction, and epidemiological research. Maternal immune activation and gut brain axis were gradually becoming research hotspots. Conclusion Research on inflammation and immunity of ASD in children increased rapidly in the past 20 years. Recent research hotspots included maternal immune activation and gut brain axis mechanisms, which could be integreted in future efforts to develop prevention and intervention programming on ASD in children.