Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Amburana cearensis : A Scientometric Study on an Endangered Medicinal Tree

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Introduction
Te indiscriminate human exploitation of natural wealth has generated serious consequences in terrestrial dynamics.Te magnitude of human actions is observed mainly in renewable natural resources, with direct or indirect infuence on the increase of extinction rates [1] and the number of endangered species.Tis is the case of Amburana cearensis (Allemão) A.C.Sm, popularly known as cumaru or imburana-de-cheiro, which has signifcant economic and medical potential, but is threatened with extinction according to the IUCN Red List of Treatened Species [2] due to the predatory extraction of its wood [3].Tis species occurs in various regions of Brazil, such as in the dry savanna woodlands, Cerrado, Caatinga, and Chaco in the Brazilian Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest, as well as in plateau areas ranging from elevations of 500 to 1000 meters associated with rich or poor soils restricted to places with calcareous outcrops.Besides Brazil, it also occurs in dry forest enclaves, deciduous and occasionally semideciduous forests, that extend to Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia [4].
Its disappearance could cause irreparable harm to the ecosystem, triggering negative environmental and social impacts.In addition, population reduction makes it virtually impossible to conduct research that fully identifes its chemical composition and pharmacological applications [3].Tus, it is necessary to document the pharmacological richness of the species and then formulate strategies for its conservation to contribute to the ecological balance of the biome.
A. cearensis presents various uses in ethnomedicine among with its pharmacological properties.According to [5], the antibacterial and in vitro antimalarial efect of the stem bark chloroform and dichloromethane extracts, as well as the variety of isolated compounds with antifalciparum, leishmanicidal, and bactericidal activities are some of the pharmacological properties of A. cearensis.In addition, according to the same authors, the stem bark and seeds of the species have therapeutic properties commonly used in teas, decoctions, and syrups to treat respiratory, rheumatic, and spasmodic diseases.
An efective way to establish such strategies is to recognize the socio-environmental potential of the species.To this end, surveys have been conducted to ascertain the use of plants by local populations and evaluate scientifc knowledge about specifc themes [7].Scientometrics has helped with these surveys through the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the relevant scientifc production [8].Trough this tool, it is possible to present an overview of trends in the scientifc literature regarding the therapeutic properties of the species Amburana cearensis.
Terefore, we aimed to identify the main trends in scientifc production about the species.Te following hypotheses guided our study: (i) there is growing interest from researchers in studying and better understanding the medicinal components present in the species; and (ii) the number of studies involving experimental investigation methods is growing, with the objective of investigating the pharmacological potential suggested by the use in traditional medicine.

Materials and Methods
Initially, we analyzed scientifc works on the widespread pharmacological use of Amburana cearensis.Terefore, we adopted the research method known as scientometrics (Figure 1), which has proved benefcial in conducting surveys and analyses of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of scientifc output [8].We followed the methods of Santos [9].
Te searches to identify scientifc production were performed in the databases "Web of Science" (https:// webofscience.com),"Scielo" (https://scielo.br)"Scopus" (https://scopus.com),"PubMed" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), and "Google Scholar" (https://scholar.google.com).Te scientifc name, synonyms, and popular name of the species were used as keywords to search for articles.As inclusion criteria, we considered only scientifc publications with the accepted botanical name of the species, Amburana cearensis, its synonyms Torresea cearensis and Amburana claudii; and the vernacular name cumaru.Tus, excluded from the analyses were undergraduate course completion papers, dissertations, theses, ebooks, and research originating from event proceedings and investigations related to the species, but did not encompass studies focusing on its medicinal properties.
For each study presenting the popular species name, we verifed if the approach was related to the species A. cearensis.Keywords had to appear in the title, abstract, or keywords.In addition, we considered only scientifc research involving the ethnobotanical aspects of the species or its potential for drug production between 2005 and 2023.
For each study related to A. cearensis, we determined, based on the above criteria, the following information: (a) journal name; (b) classifcation of the study according to the methodology used; (c) impact factor; (d) the number of citations; (e) scope of the journal; (f ) language in which the article was published; (g) the number of authors involved in each publication; (h) name of the frst author and the respective institutional afliation; (i) academic background of the principal author; (j) corresponding author; (k) region where the study was carried out; (l) biome, considering the location of sample collection reported; and (m) therapeutic purpose of using extracts of the species.Tis information was organized in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and quantifed using the R software.
We obtained the Impact Factor (IF) of the journals considering the CiteScore, an indicator that denotes the impact of publications based on their respective number of citations.We also used the percentile, an index that makes it easier to know the exact percentage where each journal is positioned within its specialty.Te Scopus platform, the global analytics company Elsevier's most prominent scientifc database, has developed these metrics.Te purpose of the metrics is to defne the impact and relevance of peerreviewed works (books, journals, and other scientifc publications) based on citations, including supplements and special issues of these journals [10].
We considered only publications in Web of Science to analyze the number of citations and impact factor of journals.We used the Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H′) to estimate the diversity of journals that published works related to ethnobotany and the pharmacological applications of the species [11].We investigated the scope of each journal to identify how international its circulation is.For this, we consulted the data on each journal on the website of the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT), specifcally in the section Consultation of the National Collective Catalog (CCN) (https://ccn.ibict.br/busca.jsf).Te medicinal properties reported in each study analyzed were classifed according to the medicinal

Results
A total of 310 publications referring to the species A. cearensis were found and indexed in the databases consulted between 2005 and 2023.After fltering the data, 223 articles were excluded for not meeting the established criteria.Tus, 86 articles were considered in the scientometric analysis, distributed in 46 journals (Table 1).Te Shannon-Wiener diversity index obtained from these quantitative values was H′ � 3.98.Terefore, the diversity of journals that published studies related to A. cearensis is relatively high.
A more signifcant number of experimental studies (56.98) were observed, focusing on unraveling the chemical composition and therapeutic purposes of A. cearensis.Broken down further, there were ethnobotanical investigations (26.74%) concentrated on the preservation and understanding of traditional uses, and clinical analysis studies (2.33%) aiming at evaluating the efects of medications derived from the species on the organism.Tese clinical studies are randomized analyses, which prove to be efective in confrming the medicinal potential of phytotherapeutic products, as well as in evaluating the safety of therapeutic approaches.Studies prioritizing the association of one or more methods, such as ethnobotanical/experimental, experimental/software, were also recorded, as well as literature review/patent analysis (Figure 2).
Each of the articles that conducted this investigation was consulted regarding citation numbers, considering that this analysis is one of the goals established for the journal to achieve a higher impact factor.Tus, the number of citations ranged from 0 to 97, with the article by Albuquerque and Oliveira [13] published in the "Journal of Ethnopharmacology" having the highest number of citations (117), followed by the article by Bitu et al. [14] published in the "Journal of Ethnopharmacology," and the article by Canuto and Silveira [15] published in the journal "Química Nova" (Figure 3).
Te journals analyzed were considered, in general, as references of quality and capacity for project research in a global context.Tus, a trend observed in this study was that among the articles in the sample, those with the highest number of citations were published in journals with the highest impact factor.
We also observed that several journals from non-English speaking countries, including Brazilians, have prioritized publishing in English.Terefore, English was the most used language of articles (62.63%), followed by Portuguese (34.9%),Spanish, and Japanese (both 1.6%).In addition to another article that was published in Portuguese and English versions, corresponding to a percentage of 1.6%.
Te academic afliation of the frst author of each article was investigated to obtain a list of educational intuitions involved in research on the species.An almost total predominance of Brazilian institutions was observed.Only the study by Kim [16] came from a foreign institution, Gyeongnam, located in South Korea.Te Brazilian intuitions that presented the highest number of publications were from the northeast region of the country: the Federal University of Ceará (with 15 studies), the Federal University of Vale do São Francisco (with eight investigations) and the Federal University of Pernambuco (with six).Te representation levels of the other teaching and research institutions can be observed in Figure 4, and the specifc listing with the defnitions of the abbreviations of each center used for the study sampling is in Table 2.
Te Caatinga biome stands out as the most representative (75.58%), followed by the Cerrado (9.30%) and the Atlantic Forest (1.6), respectively.It is noteworthy that 12.79% of the articles investigated did not inform the location in which the samples were taken (collection of Amburana cearesis; products from the species) or were developed using specifc methodologies that did not include collection of the species.
Te medicinal properties of the species were classifed according to the medicinal indications mentioned in the    3).
In addition to the indications presented in the table, some of the studies revealed the ability of the species to have anti-infammatory, analgesic, antidiuretic, antioxidant, anticoagulant, anti-allergic, acaricidal, and/or edematogenic activity.Te efectiveness of Amburana cearensis in controlling some parasites and aiding specifc treatments of animal fertility was also mentioned in some of the articles.
It is important to emphasize that many of the therapeutic indications presented in Table 2 originate from studies conducted with traditional communities.Tese investigations consider the use that humans make of natural resources as a tactic for their survival and the accumulation of information generated from their customs and practices, as we can observe in Table 4.

Discussion
We found growth in the number of publications and study methodologies, refecting the progressive interest of researchers over the years regarding Amburana cearensis, especially concerning therapeutic efcacy (experimental studies) and the preservation of ethnobotanical knowledge.Te pharmaceutical industry is facing major challenges in developing new pharmacological products [37].As a result, investigations of natural resources intensifed, searching for discoveries to underpin the development of new therapeutic products.Te predominance of publications describing experimental investigation can be explained by the benefts of the current technological development, which facilitates the determination of the plant's pharmacology and mechanisms of action [38].Additionally, there were a growing number of ethnobotany studies during the period studied, refecting the desire to preserve traditional knowledge of the use of medicinal species, which is usually the starting point for experimental investigations.In this light, the results of the scientometric study in the present work refect a growing convergence between modern medicine and traditional medicine.
Te number of citations represents the social and cognitive resources of science.Te citing and referencing techniques are practices that favor the logical expression of producing, organizing, disseminating, preserving, and using information based on the scientifc method [39].According to the evaluation of the citations, the older articles (2005-2016) generally had a larger number of citations compared to the more recent ones (2017-2023).Tus, the time elapsed after publication is an essential factor in the number of citations.According to Souza et al. [8], articles are usually cited in the frst two years after publication.However, when citations occur mainly in these early years,  International Journal of Forestry Research researchers can beneft more quickly from the expanding number of citations of their works [40].Terefore, citation analysis is essential to determining the bibliometric impact of scientifc production.
International journals have more signifcant impacts than national ones (Table 1).Due to this disparity, editors involved in national scientifc publications have sought strategies to intensify their reputation and promote their journals' internationalization to improve indicators that measure the impacts of their publications.As a result, several journals from non-English-speaking countries, including Brazilian ones, have prioritized publication in English to increase the presence in the main international databases, thus raising visibility for wider access.Terefore, the English language is recognized as the leader in communicating and disseminating scientifc ideas [8].
Te signifcant concentration of public universities in the elaboration of the studies investigated, particularly in the Brazilian northeastern states, can be explained by the incentive to train researchers and the creation of new graduate programs supported by CAPES in the region, especially in recent years [41].Regarding the contribution of institutions, there is predominance of universities (UFC, UNIVASF, and UFPE).Since A. cearensis is a native species of the northeastern semiarid region where these universities are located, this refects the desire of their administrators and researchers to recognize the biological potential of their local or regional fora.Tis reality is also refected in the representative participation of studies of the Caatinga biome in our sample.
Tere also was considerable presence of articles involving the Cerrado biome.It is considered a hotspot for conservation due to its impressive biodiversity [42].

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International Journal of Forestry Research Another factor that explains its representativeness is the fact that A. cearensis is native to the Caatinga but not endemic.Terefore, the species is part of the phytogeographic domains of other biomes such as Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, and Pantanal [43].
A. cearensis is widely used in traditional medicine for therapeutic purposes (Tables 3 and 4).In addition to the potential reported by residents of the traditional communities that make use of this plant, detailed experimental studies have confrmed other possible medicinal uses of the species, as can be seen in the investigations carried out by Almeida et al. [3]; Leal et al. [44]; Santos et al. [45]; Dantas et al. [46]; Aguiar et al. [47]; and Pereira et al. [48].Among these potentials, the cytotoxic efect on cancer cells and protective action against hepatotoxicity stand out, revealing the ability of A. cearensis, through its principle ingredients, to perform functions in diferent body systems [49].
It is also important to highlight the toxicity efects of the species to determine its safe consumption, and for that, studies carried out by Almeida et al. [3] concluded that high doses of the hydroalcoholic extract present in the coumarin, extracted from A. cearensis, did not show any teratogenic efect on Wistar rats, well as daily doses of 20 mL (each) of "cumaru" syrup for 30 consecutive days, which did not show any changes in the volunteer patients' clinical-laboratory parameters.
Phytochemical investigations were able to identify the distinguished chemical composition found in in diferent parts of A. cearensis.For instance, analysis of its stem bark extracts resulted in the isolation of coumarin and amburosides A and B; coumarins, gallic and ellagic acid, catechin, rutin, and morin were found in its seeds, as well as phenolic compounds such as protocatechuic acid, epicatechin, gallic acid, and kaempferol in its leaf ethanolic extract [50].Te medicinal properties found in those International Journal of Forestry Research compounds are scientifcally supported by in vivo and in vitro studies that utilized bark extracts and fractions, with only nine compounds being evaluated for their pharmacological efects, reporting the various uses of A. cearensis as anti-infammatory, antinociceptive, antimicrobial, and, as discovered in recent assays, as acaricidal, repellent, and photoprotective [50].Terefore, the therapeutic efcacy of the species has not only been confrmed for the treatment of diseases and other ailments but also to support assisted reproduction of sheep, since its extract can be used to maintain the survival and growth of preantral follicles, as confrmed by the studies by Gouveia et al. [51] and Menezes et al. [52].Moreover, this plant is also promising for veterinary medicine.Finally, there is a need to consider the development of public policies and programs to conserve biodiversity, including A. cearensis.Tese initiatives may involve creating priority areas for conservation containing large populations of the species, facilitating natural regeneration with local seed stocks, developing a circle of cooperation among stakeholders, and enacting legislation to conserve the genetic diversity of the species [53].International Journal of Forestry Research Diseases of the respiratory system, digestive system, cardiovascular system, diseases of the blood and hematopoietic organs, infectious and parasitic diseases, snake bites and migraines st, rb, sa, sh, se Tea, syrup, bath, gargle, tincture, inhalation Conservation Unit Tatu Bola, Lagoa Grande, Pernambuco-NO Brazil [29] Anti-infammatory, intestinal colic, fu, stomachache, snake bite, diarrhea, migraine, emetic, headache, joint pain, dizziness, fever, constipation, depurative, diuretic, kidney infection se, ba N.E.Community of Santo Antonio, Currais, PI-NE Brazil [30] Expectorant and sinusitis ba Homemade syrup Barra de Santa Rosa, Cuité, Nova foresta Baraúna, Picuí, PB, Jaçanã, RN-NE Brazil [31] Chickenpox, infantile colic, infammation in general, tooth, eruptions, infuenza, antipyretic and expectorant ba, se

Syrup and bath
Oeiras, PI-NE Brazil [32] Nervous system disorders, used especially as a calming and as antidepressant ba, se Tea, tonic and homemade syrup chewed Texeira de Freitas, BA-NE Brazil

Conclusions
Amburana cearensis is widely used in traditional medicine, attracting the interest of researchers to perform studies, especially experimental ones, focusing on unraveling its pharmacological potential.Trough the data collected, we found a large geographic bias, since most of the studies were performed by researchers linked to Brazilian institutions, especially in the northeast region, which contains the largest number of points of occurrence of the species.In-depth investigations into the medicinal properties of the primary and secondary metabolites produced by A. cearensis should continue so that its therapeutic benefts are fully understood.Finally, it is necessary to recognize the importance of linking chemical and pharmacological analyses with investigation of the sustainable management of the species, since it is facing extinction.Furthermore, to improve conservation management, social, political, and economic trade-ofs are decisive to reach practical solutions.

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International Journal of Forestry Research uses mentioned in the manuscripts, considering body systems and treated symptoms.Subsequently, they were associated with the International Classifcation of Diseases and Related Health Problems-ICD 10 [12].

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Te fowchart summarizes the scientometric method utilized in this research.

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International Journal of Forestry Research articles.Next, these were classifed according to the International Classifcation of Diseases-ICD 10 (Table

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Number of articles published from 2005 to 2023 in intervals of four years and classifcation of the study according to the method of analysis.

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Number of citations versus year of publication and authorship of scientifc articles.

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: Distribution of the percentages of publications in relation to educational institution.
: (S00-T98) Injury, poisoning and some other consequences of external causes Toxic efect of contact with venomous animals such as snakes 04 Injuries 01 T.P.S: therapeutic purpose of the species.

Table 1 :
List of scientifc journals that included the analyzed studies and their respective scope.
NP � number of publications per journal; A � scope; N � national; I � international; CS � citescore; P � percentile; N/A � not applicable; N/C � not included.

Table 2 :
List with the defnitions of abbreviations of the teaching and research institutions that were part of the study sample.

Table 3 :
Terapeutic purposes of the species recorded by the analyzed studies, and their receptive performance in physiological systems, organized according to the International Classifcation of Diseases-ICD 10.

Table 4 :
Indications for medical uses of Amburana cearensis reported by traditional communities.