Exploring Research Trends in Chronic Kidney Disease and Sedentary Behavior: A Text Mining Analysis of Article Titles

Sedentary behavior (SB) has recently gained attention across various diseases due to its relationship with disease onset, quality of life, and prognosis. In the present study, we searched for journal article titles associated with the relationship between chronic kidney disease (CKD) and SB and used an exploratory text mining analysis to conduct an exploratory examination of research trends. On January 1, 2026, we entered “chronic kidney disease and sedentary behavior” into the PubMed® article search engine and downloaded article titles, authors, journal names, and publication years. Using the text mining software KH Coder® (KH Coder 3.0, Koichi Higuchi, Japan), we extracted frequently occurring words from article titles and performed a correspondence analysis by time period (up to 2015, 2016-2020, and 2021-2025) and survey location (Japan and outside Japan). The search results found 178 articles. The total number of words obtained for article titles was 2,890. The top five most frequent words were “kidney” (91 words), “disease” (88 words), “physical” (78 words), “activity” (68 words), and “chronic” (68 words). In the correspondence analysis by time period, “randomize”, “intervention”, and “cohort” were characteristic. “Randomize” was characteristic from 2021 to 2025. In the analysis by survey location, only eight out of all articles conducted surveys in Japan, indicating that surveys in Japan were fewer, with most originating from outside Japan. Research investigating the relationship between CKD and SB has recently begun to see the implementation of high-level evidence studies, such as cohort studies and randomized controlled trials. Furthermore, many of these studies appear to have been conducted outside Japan.