Abstract
Chronic gastritis (CG) is an inflammatory disease. Atractylodes macrocephala Koidz (AMK) is employed in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to treat various disorders. AMK can be efficacious against CG, but the active ingredients, drug targets, and its exact molecular mechanism are not known. We employed network pharmacology to analyze the active ingredients, drug targets, and key pathways of AMK in CG treatment. Seventy-seven AMK candidate ingredients were selected from four databases, and 27 active ingredients were selected for CG treatment. Twenty-five overlapping gene symbols related to CG and drugs were obtained from GeneCards and OMIM databases. A protein–protein interaction (PPI) network and TCM comprehensive network (Drug–Ingredients–Gene symbols–Disease network) were constructed, and 528 Gene Ontology (GO) terms and 26 pathways were obtained by analyses of enrichment of GO pathways and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. We suggest that the interleukin-17 signaling pathway, C-type lectin receptor signaling pathway, tumor necrosis factor signaling pathway, and AGE-RAGE signaling pathway in diabetic complications might serve as the key points and principal pathways for CG treatment. We also evaluated the reliability of some important active ingredients and targets by in vitro experiments. We showed that AMK probably influences the inflammatory response, amino acid synthesis, and energy metabolism when treating CG. This study provides novel insights for researchers to explore the mechanism of action of TCM systematically.
Highlights
Chronic gastritis (CG) is an inflammatory disease in which the epithelium of the gastric mucosa is invaded by various pathogenic factors, which results in persistent and chronic inflammatory changes
ATL-I had a low Drug likeness” (DL), but it was retained as an active ingredient because it is the major constituent of Atractylodes macrocephala Koidz (AMK) (Zhang et al, 1998; Li et al, 2007)
We found that proliferation of human gastric cancer cells was inhibited by ATL-I in a time-dependent and dose-dependent manner (p < 0.05)
Summary
Chronic gastritis (CG) is an inflammatory disease in which the epithelium of the gastric mucosa is invaded by various pathogenic factors, which results in persistent and chronic inflammatory changes. CG can be divided into three categories: chronic non-atrophic, chronic atrophic, and “special.” If not treated in a timely manner, CG can transform into gastric cancer (Ohata et al, 2004; Yue et al, 2018; Osaki et al, 2019; Han et al, 2019). Most patients with CG do not have obvious symptoms, and the main symptom is dyspepsia, which is nonspecific. Some CG patients can present with abdominal pain, bloating, and other symptoms of indigestion. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to treat various diseases for thousands of years. In TCM theory, CG is divided into six types according to the pattern of: accumulation of damp heat in the spleen–stomach; dampness obstructing the spleen–stomach; spleen–stomach Qi deficiency; spleen–stomach deficiency cold; liver–Qi stagnation; stagnant heat in the liver– stomach (Zhu et al, 2014)
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