Applications of essential oils in medical field: progression of publications in PubMed database

Abstract

The research and the application of natural substances such as essential oils in medical field knew a progression around the world. The purpose of our work is to study the evolution of research publications on essential oils in the medical field. This study is conducted by using the PubMed database in a period from 1945 to 2018. Our results show a number of 12619 worldwide publications on essential oils in the medical field since 1945, the number of which began with a dozen of publications and reached a peak of 819 publications in 2016. The sub domains concern 6905 in dietary supplements, 4775 in toxicology, 1796 in veterinary science, 1629 publications in the field of cancer, 39 on AIDS. 4536 bearing on the animal species and 3095 on the human species. The majority of these publications are journal articles. Overall, we counted 101 publications in Tunisia, 85 in Turkey, 54 in Algeria; 51 in Egypt; 39 in Morocco, 37 in Spain, 31 in France and 12 in Germany. In Algeria, publications based on PubMed were started in 2008 with 24 publications in the last five years.