Abstract
Liver fibrosis is a progressive liver damage condition that is worth studying widely. It is important to target and alleviate the disease at an early stage before turning into later cirrhosis or liver cancer. There are currently no direct medicines targeting the attenuation or reversal of liver fibrosis, and so there is an urgent need to look into this area. Traditional Chinese Medicine has a long history in using herbal medicines to treat liver diseases including fibrosis. It is time to integrate the ancient wisdom with modern science and technology to look for the best solution to the disease. In this review, the principal concept of the pathology of liver fibrosis will be described, and then some of the single compounds isolated from herbal medicines, including salvianolic acids, oxymatrine, curcumin, tetrandrine, etc. will be discussed from their effects to the molecular mechanism behind. Molecular targets of the compounds are analyzed by network pharmacology approach, and TGFβ/SMAD was identified as the most common pathway. This review serves to summarize the current findings of herbal medicines combining with modern medicines in the area of fibrosis. It hopefully provides insights in further pharmaceutical research directions.
Highlights
Liver fibrosis is a great concern in public health, as it could result in cirrhosis, portal hypertension, liver failure, and possibly hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that cause deaths
We summarized the current research progress on compounds isolated from herbal medicine in treating liver fibrosis by targeting hepatic stellate cells (HSCs)
Progressive fibrosis leading to cirrhosis or eventually cancer will become irreversible, so diagnosis and treatment must be centered in the early stage
Summary
Liver fibrosis is a great concern in public health, as it could result in cirrhosis, portal hypertension, liver failure, and possibly hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that cause deaths. A common result of progressive liver fibrosis is cirrhosis, which affects 1–2% of the world population (Higashi et al, 2017); it causes over one million deaths annually ranking the 11th most common cause of mortality worldwide (Asrani et al, 2019) and has an incidence of over five million in 2017 (James et al, 2018). Liver fibrosis is a chronic state of hepatic injuries, which could be the result of viral infection (HBV, HCV), alcohol consumption, drug abuse, fatty liver, steatohepatitis, as well as autoimmune disease (Seki and Schwabe, 2015).
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