Visual Analysis of Research Progress and Future Trend of Carthamus Tinctorius L. Based on CiteSpace

OBJECTIVE To summarize the research hotspots of Carthamus tinctorius L. by analyzing the English literature on Carthamus tinctorius L. and summarize the pharmacological activities of Carthamus tinctorius L.. To explore the future research direction of Carthamus tinctorius L.. METHODS Based on Web of Science database and CiteSpace 5.8.R3 software, English literatures related to Carthamus tinctorius L. from 2000 to 2021 were collected on the retrieval platform for bibliometric analysis. Analysis and visualization were made from the number of articles published by the institutions, countries, authors, Top 20 cited literatures, Top15 journals, co-occurrence of keywords and future hot spots. RESULTS A total of 1 230 articles were included in the study, accounting for 89.5% of the total number of articles published from 2007 to 2021, mainly in Asian countries, such as China, Iran and India, et al. The sending agencies were mainly concentrated in universities in Asian countries. Among them, Iran’s Islamic Azad University had the largest number of publications with 53. It had formed a research cooperation network with university of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University and other universities as the core and had become a close cooperation institution in the field of Carthamus tinctorius L research in China. The authors with the largest number of papers was the team represented by Meili Guo. The research of the team involved the genetic mechanism of Carthamus tinctorius L. and its relatives with a total of 13 papers. Analysis of keywords showed that the research direction focused on the cultivation, active components, pharmacological mechanism and activation reaction of safflower, and the antioxidant capacity of the active components of Carthamus tinctorius L. and the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease would become hot research spots in the future. CONCLUSION The annual amount of Carthamus tinctorius L. is increasing year by year, its future research focuses on exploring new pharmacological effects of its active components and verifying the therapeutic effects of diseases. Relevant researches on Carthamus tinctorius L. are still in the development stage and relevant research teams should strengthen trans-regional cooperation to provide important reference for subsequent researches on Carthamus tinctorius L..