Objective: This study aims to gain an overview of hot topics related to research focused on Chinese herbal drugs by authors inside China and outside of China in the past 10 years.
Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE was utilized in order to investigate and select research that was published on "Chinese herbal drugs" from 1998 to 2007, by authors located both inside and outside of China (MeSH terms were downloaded and ranked). MeSH terms that frequently appeared were identified and co-word analysis was carried out for two groups: (1) authors located in China, and (2) authors based outside of China, respectively. The hot topics concerning research into Chinese herbal drugs were concluded after cluster analysis and related document analysis.
Results: For authors in the China group versus those outside the China group, the search results were 4790 versus 2609 citations and approximately 40,000 versus 20,000 MeSH terms, respectively. The threshold value of highly frequent terms was set at 30 versus 20, and the cumulative frequency percentage of these terms was 40.92% versus 36.67%, respectively. Thus, 43 highly frequent MeSH terms were identified and 43 x 43 co-word matrices were acquired for each group. The appearance frequency of MeSH showed that most research focused on pharmacology, therapeutic application, phytotherapy, side-effects of Chinese herbal drugs, and identification of active chemical components in herbs.
Conclusion: The hot topics are as follows: (1) anti-inflammatory activity, antioxidant activities, anticancer activity of phytogenic antineoplastic agents, and neuroprotective effects of Chinese herbal drugs; (2) common diseases treated with Chinese herbal drugs include hepatocirrhosis, diabetes, angina, chronic hepatitis B in China, and diabetes, asthma, prostate cancer, and hepatocirrhosis outside of China; (3) Chinese herbal nephropathy and acute hepatitis induced by Chinese herbal drugs; (4) PC-SPES (PDQ) for the treatment of prostate cancer, which was a hot topic for researchers located outside of China; (5) research on extraction of active components from medicinal plants; and finally (6) research related to the identification of the Chinese herbal drugs component with state-of-the-art technologies in China.