The Use of Berberine in Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome: Two Sides of the Same Coin. A Bibliometric Analysis

The increased prevalence of obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes has prompted scientists to look for new active and safe molecules that may help the prevention of metabolic disorders: hyperglycemia, insulin-resistance and dyslipidemia. Berberine is an alkaloid compound derived from plants, and it is largely used in traditional Chinese medicine. The aim of this study is to investigate in SCOPUS and Web of Science (WOS) databases how the scientists focused on the use of berberine against metabolic disorders, in human subjects. We carried A bibliometric analysis of scientific literature and performed 2 searches: 1) “Berberine” AND “Diabetes” AND “Diabetes Type 2”, 2) “Berberine” AND “Metabolic Syndrome”, both in ARTICLE (Title/Abstract/Keyword) with a time limitation of 1st January, 2000 through 31st December, 2018, with the filter on “HUMAN” AND/OR “HUMANS”. The research sorted out 500 papers, finding about 300 (60 %) in the first search definition and 200 (40 %) in the second. The refined research sorted out 46 papers regarding the use of berberine in diabetes, and 40 articles on the use of the alkaloid compound in metabolic syndrome. For both topics, we found increasing interest between 2008 and 2009, with citation trends in a constant crescendo in the overall period studied. These findings underlined that berberine is a safe and interesting botanical compound, especially against chronic-metabolic disorder that affects billions of people globally, and emphasized that scientists are interested in searching for long-term therapies that show no major adverse effects.