A scientometric study on herbal medicine and identification of herbaceous agents for oral cancer prevention.

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: Natural products derived from herbal medicine have been extensively researched in the alternative treatment of oral cancer prevention. The purpose of this study was to analyze the scientometric characteristics of herbal medicine in oral cancer prevention with emphasis on the identification of the herbaceous agents. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All the articles on herbal medicine in oral cancer prevention were comprehensively retrieved from the Scopus database. The common herbaceous agents for oral cancer prevention were identified from the top-100 most-cited articles. RESULTS: A total of 759 articles on herbal medicine in oral cancer prevention were retrieved. The total citation count was 17,958 and the h index was 64 for all the articles. The keywords of the study design, experiment methods, clinical and laboratory aspects such as controlled study, animal experiment, drug effect, drug cytotoxicity, histopathology, oxidative stress, signal transduction, metabolism, genetics, tumor xenograft, molecular docking, and DNA damage were included. Various herbs such as curcumin/curcuminoids, black raspberry, resveratrol, aloe vera, green tea extract, rhein, and berberine were frequently cited in oral cancer prevention. They show anticancer effects by causing apoptosis, autophagy, antioxidant, and cell cycle arrest through different signaling pathways such as Akt/mTOR pathway and mitochondrial pathway. CONCLUSION: This study for the first time elucidates the scientometric characteristics of all the articles on herbal medicine in oral cancer prevention, and may provide new insights for researchers to comprehend the identification of the herbaceous agents for the prevention of the disease.