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BACKGROUND: The treatment of stem cells in intervertebral disc degeneration has always been a research hotspot. It is possible to predict and analyze the research status and development trend of this field to a certain extent, applying bibliometric analysis software to perform co-occurrence and co-citation analysis of numerous literature data in this field. OBJECTIVE: To analyze research status and development trend of stem cells in the treatment of intervertebral disc degeneration by bibliometric visualization analysis. METHODS: The authors retrieved the literature on stem cells in the treatment of intervertebral disc degeneration from 1999 to 2020 through the core collection of Web of Science, and used bibliometrics methods to conduct statistical analysis on the literature data, combined with Citespace 5.6.R5 and VOSviewer 1.6.15 software to transform the visualization atlas, analyze the research status and development trend of stem cells in the treatment of intervertebral disc. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) A total of 613 articles were included. The number of publications of stem cells in intervertebral disc treatment research is increasing year by year. Among them, China and the United States rank first and second with 232 and 174 publications respectively. (2) The United States has a total citation frequency (5 522), h index (42), and betweenness centrality (0.75) ranks first, both higher than the second place in China (3 169, 28, 0.16). (3) The top ten cited references introduced the research on the treatment of intervertebral disc degeneration with microscopic mesenchymal stem cells from various aspects, and seven of them were related to nucleus pulposus like differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. Two papers are related to the best cell source and cell carrier generation in the treatment of intervertebral disc regeneration. One is related to the clinical trial study of the treatment of degenerative disc regeneration. (4) The timeline chart of reference co-citation shows that the most references are published in clusters of “Mesenchymal Stem Cells”, “Notochord Cells”, “End Plates”, and “Adipose derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells”. From a year of publication perspective, the clustering “notochord cells”, “notochord”, and “injection” published in the latest year. (5) Clustering keywords “intervertebral disc degeneration”, “migration”, “notochord cells”, “genipin” and “hydrogel” correspond exactly to the above. It was confirmed that the keywords suddenly appeared and found that present research hotspots are: mesenchymal stem cell nucleus pulposus-like differentiation, the best cell source in the treatment of intervertebral disc regeneration and the clinical effectiveness and biosafety of cell carrier construction and intervertebral disc regeneration treatment. (6) There are five new keywords from 2017 to 2019, namely “injection”, “intervertebral disc degeneration”, “inflammation”, “apoptosis”, and “puncture”, mainly focusing on cell apoptosis, inflammatory reaction, intervertebral disc regression, and cell transplantation methodology. (7) The above-mentioned global trend analysis suggests that as the amount of stem cells published in the treatment of intervertebral disc degeneration continues to increase, related research is also constantly deepening. The current research focuses on the nucleus pulposus-like differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells, the best cell source and cell carrier integration in the treatment of intervertebral disc regeneration, and the clinical effectiveness and biological safety of integration of intervertebral disc regeneration treatment. In-depth exploration of the mechanism of intervertebral disc degeneration and inflammatory response and improvement of cell transplantation methodology are the focus of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]