Engineering Research Center of Chinese Medicine Resource, Ministry of Education, Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.
College of Pharmacy, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
PLoS One. 2019 May 2;14(5):e0216135. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216135. eCollection 2019.
Aristolochic acids and their derivatives are components of many traditional medicines that have been used for thousands of years, particularly in Asian countries. To study the trends of research into aristolochic acids and provide suggestions for future study, we performed the following work. In this paper, we performed a bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace and HistCite software. We reviewed the three phases of the development of aristolochic acids by using bibliometrics. In addition, we performed a longitudinal review of published review articles over 60 years: 1,217 articles and 189 review articles on the history of aristolochic acid research published between 1957 and 2017 were analyzed. The performances of relevant countries, institutions, and authors are presented; the evolutionary trends of different categories are revealed; the history of research into aristolochic acids is divided into three phases, each of which has unique characteristics; and a roadmap of the historical overview of aristolochic acid research is finally established. Finally, five pertinent suggestions for future research into aristolochic acid are offered: (1) The study of the antitumor efficacy of aristolochic acids is of value; (2) The immune activity of aristolochic acids should be explored further; (3) Researchers should perform a thorough overview of the discovery of naturally occurring aristolochic acids; (4) More efforts should be directed toward exploring the correlation between aristolochic acid mutational signature and various cancers; (5) Further efforts should be devoted to the research and review work related to analytical chemistry. Our study is expected to benefit researchers in shaping future research directions.
马兜铃酸及其衍生物是许多传统药物的组成部分，这些药物已经使用了数千年，特别是在亚洲国家。为了研究马兜铃酸的研究趋势并为未来的研究提供建议，我们进行了以下工作。本文使用 CiteSpace 和 HistCite 软件进行了文献计量分析。我们使用文献计量学对马兜铃酸的三个发展阶段进行了回顾。此外，我们对 60 多年来发表的综述文章进行了纵向回顾：分析了 1957 年至 2017 年间发表的 1,217 篇关于马兜铃酸研究历史的文章和 189 篇综述文章。展示了相关国家、机构和作者的表现；揭示了不同类别演变的趋势；将马兜铃酸的研究历史分为三个阶段，每个阶段都有其独特的特点；最后建立了马兜铃酸研究历史概述的路线图。最后，为未来的马兜铃酸研究提出了五条建议：（1）研究马兜铃酸的抗肿瘤功效具有价值；（2）应进一步探索马兜铃酸的免疫活性；（3）研究人员应全面概述天然马兜铃酸的发现；（4）应努力探索马兜铃酸突变特征与各种癌症之间的相关性；（5）应进一步致力于与分析化学相关的研究和综述工作。我们的研究有望使研究人员受益，为未来的研究方向提供参考。
