Knowledge Mapping and Frontier Evolution of Traditional Medicine in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Research: A Bibliometric Analysis.

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common malignancy worldwide. Existing treatments are limited by high recurrence rates and drug resistance. Traditional medicine have the potential to be used to treat HCC because of their multi-target and low toxicity properties, however, there is no general review of the state of studies and tendencies. According to Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), this paper has analyzed 1936 English articles and reviews through bibliometric analysis of the data with CiteSpace and Bibliometrix, including publication trends, country/region distribution, the occurrence of keywords, collaboration networks, thematic evolution. The output of literature has been growing exponentially since 2020. The main contributor is China, which plays a central role in international cooperation. An important partner is the United States, and Egypt and France are possible partners. The area of interest is active ingredients, apoptosis modulation, and networking pharmacology. Network pharmacology and molecular docking are fundamental technologies. Emerging frontiers are tumor microenvironment, gut microbiota, lipid metabolism, and NF-κB signaling pathway. NF-κB activation, apoptosis, and angiogenesis regulation are new hotspots. This study systematically elucidates the research status and future directions of traditional medicine in the treatment of HCC, providing a reference for the prevention and treatment of HCC with traditional medicine. However, this study exclusively selected the WoSCC database for analysis, which may have the limitation of not comprehensively covering all research achievements relevant to this field.