(Artemisia Annua): a Bibliometric Study
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Annals of Library and Information Studies Vol. 58, September 2011, pp. 237-248 Research output on Artemisia ( Artemisia annua ): a bibliometric study Shri Ram Deputy Librarian, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, Solan – 173234 (Himachal Pradesh), Email: [email protected] Artemisia is a herb that yields a natural component known as ‘Artemisinin’ which is being used for the treatment of Malaria worldwide. This paper uses data indexed in the PubMed database for the period of fifteen years (1996–2010) to study the research on Artemisia. It has been found that publications on this subject grew to 712 percent in 2010 as compared to 1996. China is one of the countries that has contributed a number of publications in this area. In India, Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh is a leading contributor of literature on Artemisia. Introduction countries are the most vulnerable. WHO in its policies have made provision and recommended Rapid Artemisia belongs to the tribe Arthemideae of the Diagnostic Test (RDT) to all patients suspected of subfamily Asteroideae of Asteraceae. Artemisia is a 1 suffering from malaria. As per the guidelines framed large diverse genus of plants with 200-400 species . by WHO, confirmed cases of Plasmodium falciparum The species Artemisia annua is an annual herb that malaria must be treated with an Artemisinin-based grows naturally in the northern part of Chahar and combination therapy (ACT) 5,6 . Suiauan provinces of China at around 1000-1500 m above sea level. It is now naturalized in many Malaria is a serious problem especially in Africa, countries such as USA, Yugoslavia, Hungary, where one in every five (20%) childhood deaths is Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Argentina, Italy, France due to the effects of the disease. An African child has and Spain and India. on average between 1.6 and 5.4 episodes of malaria fever each year, and every 30 seconds a child dies Artemisia annua is the source of Artemisinin and from malaria. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), chemically, Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene lactone USA has decided to use the drug Coartem (a containing an unusual peroxide bridge. It is believed combination drug of two ingredients, a chemical that this peroxide is responsible for the drug's derivative of Artemisinin and lumefantrine, a broad- mechanism of action. It is efficient against multidrug spectrum antibiotic that stays in the body for about 2,3 resistant strain of Plasmodium , the malaria parasite . seven days) as part of an expedited review reserved Governmental and non-governmental organizations, for life-saving treatments of Malaria. Coartem is the medical research centers and Food and Health most effective treatment for Plasmodium falciparum Organizations are working in close coordination with malaria, the most lethal form 7,8 . According to drug- research and development institutes to harness the maker Novartis, Coartem wipes out malaria in more medicinal values of this plant especially in producing than 96 percent of patients in regions where malaria herbal products. World Health Organization (WHO) has become resistant to older drugs. Traditional on advice of international experts has recommended medicines such as chloroquine work in only 50 combinations of drugs to replace single drug use in percent of patients where the parasite is drug- treatment of malaria caused by Plasmodium resistant. falciparum 4. According to the WHO statistics there were an It is estimated that about 3.3 billion people - half of estimated 247 million malaria cases in 2006 out of the world's population - are at a risk of malaria. Every which nearly 881,000 patients died. Wormseed year, it leads to about 250 million malaria cases and (Artemisia absinthium ) is another species of nearly one million deaths. People living in the poorest Artemisia being used as powerful biological agent 238 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., SEPTEMBER 2011 against fungi, bacteria and even some harmful insects. • To examine the productivity of journals Artemisia tea is also used for strengthening immune publishing papers related to Artemisia; system of AIDS patients. Scientists are working on • Artemisia for the treatment of haemorrhoids, eye To unfold the authorship patterns and productivity infections, bronchitis, skin complaints - as ointment, amongst the publication of Artemisia; and digestion related problems, and as a supportive • To report the Indian publication activity on treatment for cancer. The medicinal values have Artemisia. attracted medical scientists as well as biological scientific community to explore more of the potential Methodology use of this plant for the purpose of medicinal use and eradication of some of the life threatening diseases Data was collected from PubMed database of such as AIDS and malaria. National Center for Biological Information, USA. The administration of Artemisinin initiated drugs for Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) indexing terms eradication of malaria in India 9, its antipyretic and were used to extract bibliographic information. Search anti inflammatory effect; strengthening immune was carried out based on the keywords (Table 1) system against AIDS 10 ; cancer, as well as use of available in ‘Title’, ‘MeSH terms’, and ‘Abstract’ Artemisia as herbal tea in Chinese community and its limiting the time period i.e., year 1996-2010 (Fifteen other medicinal uses prompted this bibliometric study Years) through advanced search feature of PubMed. on the research output on this plant. The search criteria yielded 1526 records for this period. After removing irrelevant records which were Objectives of the study not related to Artemisia, 1484 records were used for data analysis. The main objective of this study is to highlight the publishing patterns and research output of Artemisia Data preparation during 1996–2010 indexed in PubMed (available at http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/). The specific objec- XML/XSL transformation scripts have been used for tives of the study are: data extraction and data preparation. XSLT • To find out the growth of publication during this (EXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is period; a method used to convert XML document in any desired style such as HTML, Excel or Text. XSL • To identify the country-wise distribution of processors transform whole XML documents into papers; another XML/HTML format according to XSLT style 11 • To analyze the type of publications; sheets . Here in this study XSLT is used to convert XML document into HTML table, one of the • To identify language-wise publication patterns; prerequisites of bibliometric analysis is to have the Table 1—MeSH indexing terms of Artemisia MeSH Terms Artemisias Mugwort Tarragon Plants Artemisia abrotanum Sagewort Mugworts Artemisia maritima Artemisia abrotanums Sageworts Wormwood Artemisia maritimas abrotanum, Artemisia Sagebrush Wormwoods maritima, Artemisia abrotanums, Artemisia Sagebrushs Artemisia dracunculus maritimas, Artemisia Southernwood Wormseed, Levant dracunculus, Artemisia Artemisia vulgaris Southernwoods Levant Wormseed Tarragon Plant Artemisia vulgari Artemisia judaica Levant Wormseeds Plant, Tarragon vulgari, Artemisia Artemisia judaicas Wormseeds, Levant Plants, Tarragon vulgaris, Artemisia judaica, Artemisia SHRI RAM: RESEARCH OUTPUT ON ARTEMISIA ( ARTEMISIA ANNUA ): A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY 239 data in a table format. In order to convert PubMed support, English abstract, case studies, clinical trials, bibliographic data in to HTML table the following etc. A total of 1228 publications amounting to 82.75 steps were followed: percent of articles are indexed as journal articles and 123 publications amounting to 8.29 percent papers are Step 1: Used web edition of PubMed available at comparative studies and the remaining literature NCBI (http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed); published differently as given in Table 2. Step 2: Searching Artemisia publications using advance search feature; Language of publications Step 3: Choosing Medline Format; Majority of the papers have been published in English Step 4: Exporting bibliographic data as XML format language (89.22%). Table 3 shows that 7.95 percent (Fig. 1). articles were published in Chinese, 0.81 percent article came in Japanese language along with 0.74 Step 5: Design of XSL Transformation sheet using percent in French and 0.34 percent in Russian. XSL; Step 6: Use of XSLT for the Transformation of XML Research output on Artemisia document into HTML Table (Fig. 2). A total of 1484 articles were published on Artemisia during the period of fifteen years (1996 – 2010). Analysis Table 4 and Fig. 3 shows there has been a consistent growth during the period 1996-2010. Publication types It is seen that from 25 articles in 1996, the research Artemisia related papers have been published in output has grown to 203 articles in 2010 with an variety of publication types. Table 2 depicts the increase in growth of 712 percent. This is an indicator overall picture of various types of the Artemisia of global research interest in the field on Artemisia. publications as indexed in PubMed. Country-wise distribution of publication in Artemisia Majority of the papers have been published in the form of journal articles. PubMed indexes publication Table 4 shows the distribution of Artemisia types under different headings such as research publications globally. Amongst the top 20 countries, Fig. 1—Typical Medline record in XML format 240 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., SEPTEMBER 2011 Fig. 2—HTML table conversion using XML/XSL transformation