Natural Products, the Continuous Source of Therapeutic Molecules for Various Diseases: Literature Landscape Analysis

Substances present in nature have been a continuous source for the development of drugs for cardiovascular and infectious diseases, cancer, and many other diseases. As the literature concerning these natural products grows, it becomes more difficult for a reader to quickly grasp the essential facts and develop a well-informed impression of this field of research. Until now, it has also been difficult to determine which natural products and research objectives were gaining the most attention as measured by a number of citations.

The current study of all published articles concerned with natural products sought to identify which natural products and which research objectives are connected with the major contributors to scientific journals based on the number of relevant publications and the number of times each publication was cited elsewhere.

Bibliometric data, including citation data, were extracted from the Web of Science database using the search string TS=("natural product*)" and analyzed by the VOSviewer software.

The search yielded 63,194 articles, with more than half of the manuscripts published since 2012. The ratio of original articles to reviews was 5.8:1. The major contributing countries were the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and India. Articles were published mainly in journals focused on chemistry, pharmacology or biochemistry. Curcumin, resveratrol, and terpenoids were the most frequently cited natural products.

The results of the current study provide researchers from different backgrounds and healthcare professionals with a brief overview of the major trends in natural-product research in the form of a citation-based summary of the relevant literature.