Objective　To explore the research trends of neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) using a co-word analysis. Methods Original articles about NEC were searched throughout the PubMed Database using a co-word analysis. The included articles were analyzed by Bibliographic Items Co-occurrence Matrix Builder (BICOMB) to retrieve MeSH words with high frequency. Then SPSS software was used to perform co-word cluster analysis and results of cluster analysis were compared between before 2008 and after 2008. Results　In total, 1479 articles were included into the co-word analysis with 776 dated before 2008 and 703 dated from 2009 to 2014. By comparison of MeSH words with high frequency between before 2008 and 2009-2014 and after co-word cluster analysis, it was found that most research hotspots were same in two periods. However, after 2008, some research hotspots disappeared and a few new hotspots were emerged. Conclusions Co-word analysis is helpful to master the research trends of NEC.