Curcumin in Wound Healing-A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Background: Curcumin has been widely used to treat a variety of diseases and disorders since ancient times, most notably for the purpose of healing wounds. Despite the large number of available reviews on this topic, a bibliometric tool-based meta-analysis is missing in the literature. Scope and approach: To evaluate the influence and significance of the countries, journals, organizations and authors that have contributed the most to this topic, the popular bibliometric markers, including article count, citation count, and Hirsch index (H-index), are taken into account. Their collaborative networks and keyword co-occurrence along with the trend analysis are also sketched out using the VOSviewer software. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric review on the topic and hence it is envisaged that it will attract researchers to explore future research dimensions in the related field.

Key findings and conclusions: India provided the most articles, making up more than 27.49 percent of the entire corpus. The International Journal of Biological Macromolecules published the most articles (44), and it also received the most citations (2012). The Journal of Ethnopharmacology (28 articles) and Current Pharmaceutical Design (20 articles) were the next most prolific journals with 1231 and 812 citations, respectively. The results indicate a significant increase in both research and publications on the wound-healing properties of curcumin. Recent studies have concentrated on creating novel medicine-delivery systems that use nano-curcumin to boost the effect of the curcumin molecule in therapeutic targeting. It has also been observed that genetic engineering and biotechnology have recently been employed to address the commercial implications of curcumin.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; curcuma longa; curcumin; turmeric; wound healing.

Figure 1

(a). Trend analysis of publications per year showing an exponential growth in annual publications through time. (b). Comparative trend analysis of the top 3 contributing countries viz., India, China and USA.

Figure 1

(a). Trend analysis of publications per year showing an exponential growth in annual publications through time. (b). Comparative trend analysis of the top 3 contributing countries viz., India, China and USA.

Figure 2

Collaboration network of contributing countries. The size of the circle is directly related to the documents that each country generated, and the fine lines demonstrate the collaboration strength. When it comes to collaboration networks, the United States came out on top with the most (33 countries) in the world. With 32 collaborators, India came in second position, ahead of Iran (29), Italy (27), and China (23).

Figure 3

Collaboration network of institutions. The Cellular and Molecular Research Center of Iran University of Medical Sciences is the most collaborative, with 8 different collaborators followed by Biotechnology Research Center (5), Neurogenic Inflammation Research Center (5) and School of Pharmacy (5).

Figure 4

Collaboration network of authors. Amini, A., Chien, S., Ghoreishi, S.K. and Bayat, M. are the closest partners with the highest link strength of 15 among each other. Meiyanto, E., and Jenie, R.I. are the second most collaborative partners with a link strength of 12.

Figure 5

Keyword co-occurrence analysis.

Figure 6

Evolution of keyword co-occurrence through time. Topics shown in blue were prevalent at the beginning of the year 2000, green topics were more prevalent between 2015 and 2018, and yellow topics predominated in the years following 2018.

Figure 7

Author’s keyword co-occurrence.