Fuling-Guizhi Herb Pair in Coronary Heart Disease: Integrating Network Pharmacology and In Vivo Pharmacological Evaluation.

Bailu Duan,Fang Huang,Dongning Zhang,Lintao Han,JingJing Li,Guangyu Tian,Shuping Ming,Qiong Wang

doi:10.1155/2020/1489036

Abstract

The Fuling (Poria cocos)-Guizhi (Cinnamomi ramulus) herb pair (FGHP) is a commonly used traditional Chinese herbal formula with coronary heart disease (CHD) treatment potential. However, the mechanism of FGHP in the treatment of CHD was still unclear. In this study, the action targets and underlying mechanism of FGHP against CHD were successfully achieved by combined network pharmacology prediction with experimental verification. 76 common targets were screened out by overlapping the chemical-protein data of FGHP and CHD-related targets. Then, two key targets were further selected for verification by using western blot analysis after analyzing PPI, GO function, and KEGG pathway. Results indicated FGHP could alleviate CHD syndromes and regulate inflammatory responses in acute myocardial ischemia rats, and the reduction of expression of TNF-α and IL-6 in myocardial tissue would be one of its possible underlying mechanisms. Our work demonstrated that network pharmacology combined with experimental verification provides a credible method to elucidate the pharmacological mechanism of FGHP against CHD.

Highlights

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a common type of heart disease and one of the most common causes of human deaths in the world [1, 2]. e World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 17.9 million people die of cardiovascular diseases in the world every year [3] and 7.4 million die of CHD [4]
CHD-related human genes were downloaded from OMIM and DisGeNET databases. en, the candidate targets of FGHP against CHD were obtained by overlapping the above targets with a Venn diagram
Pretreatment with FGHP and propranolol markedly inhibited the elevation in the levels of serum creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) and

Summary

Introduction

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a common type of heart disease and one of the most common causes of human deaths in the world [1, 2]. e World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 17.9 million people die of cardiovascular diseases in the world every year [3] and 7.4 million die of CHD [4]. E World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 17.9 million people die of cardiovascular diseases in the world every year [3] and 7.4 million die of CHD [4]. It is well-known that CHD is an archetypical multifactorial disease [5]. Single-target drugs usually fail as a cure for this multifactorial disease [6]. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), mainly Chinese herbal medicine, has been used for thousands of years to treat CHD and its related diseases, as it is characterized by multiple components, and it can treat diseases through multiple pathways and targets [8, 9]. Herb pairs (combination of two herbs) are the simplest form of herbal combination and compatibility [10], which have therapeutic features and clinical significance in Chinese herbal medicine

Methods

Results

Conclusion