Berberine, a popular dietary supplement for human and animal health: Quantitative research literature analysis – a review

Berberine is an alkaloid with a wide range of reported beneficial health effects. The current work provides an extensive literature analysis on berberine. Bibliometric data were identified by means of the search string TOPIC=(“berberin*” OR “umbellatine*”), which yielded 5,547 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection electronic database. The VOSviewer software generated bubble maps to visualize semantic terms with citation results. The ratio of original articles to reviews was 13.6:1. The literature has been growing more quickly since the 2010s. Major contributing countries were China, the United States, India, Japan, and South Korea. Most of the publications appeared in journals specialized in pharmacology pharmacy, biochemistry molecular biology, chemistry, and plant science. Some of the frequently mentioned chemicals/chemical classes were alkaloid, palmatine, jatrorrhizine, coptisine, isoquinoline, and sanguinarine. The prevalent medical conditions under investigation included Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.