Knowledge Mapping of Clinical Evidence and Mechanistic Research on Tongxie Yaofang for Ulcerative Colitis: A Bibliometric Analysis

To systematically map the knowledge landscape of clinical evidence and mechanistic research on Tongxie Yaofang (TXYF) for ulcerative colitis (UC), we conducted a bibliometric and knowledge-graph analysis of English-language articles and reviews retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection through 31 December 2025. After screening, 133 records were analyzed for publication trends, collaboration networks, journal distribution, co-citation clusters, keyword co-occurrence, and clinical-versus-mechanistic thematic structure. Operational criteria were used to classify records as clinical evidence, mechanistic research, or translational/bridge studies. The field expanded markedly after 2020 and was dominated by Chinese institutions, but international and cross-team collaboration remained limited. Mechanistic research showed strong activity around NF-kB/NLRP3, MAPK/AKT, gut microbiota, short-chain fatty-acid metabolism, intestinal barrier repair, macrophage polarization, and computational pharmacology. Clinical evidence in the English-language WoSCC corpus was comparatively sparse and often relied on broad symptom or disease-activity outcomes rather than standardized patient-reported, endoscopic, histologic, and biomarker endpoints. These findings indicate a translational disconnect between mechanistic discovery and clinical evaluation, and they support the development of mechanism-informed, multicenter clinical studies with predefined biological readouts.