Network Pharmacology‐Based Approach to Investigate the Analgesic Efficacy and Molecular Targets of Xuangui Dropping Pill for Treating Primary Dysmenorrhea

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the clinical analgesic efficacy and identify the molecular targets of XGDP for treating primary dysmenorrhea (PD) by a network pharmacology approach. Analysis of pain disappearance rate of XGDP in PD treatment was conducted based on data from phase II and III randomized, double-blind, double-simulation, and positive parallel controlled clinical trials. The bioactive compounds were obtained by the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion processes with oral bioavailability (OB) and drug-likeness (DL) evaluation. Subsequently, target prediction, pathway identification, and network construction were employed to clarify the mechanisms of the analgesic effect of XGDP on PD. The pain disappearance rates in phase II and III clinical trials of XGDP in PD treatment were 62.5% and 55.8%, respectively, yielding a significant difference (P < 0.05) when compared with the control group using Tongjingbao granules (TJBG). Among 331 compounds, 53 compounds in XGDP were identified as the active compounds related to PD through OB, DL, and target prediction. The active compounds and molecular targets of XGDP were identified, and our study showed that XGDP may exert its therapeutic effects on PD through the regulation of the targets related to anti-inflammation analgesia and central analgesia and relieving smooth muscle contraction.

Network pharmacology-based strategy to investigate pharmacological mechanisms of Ginkgo Biloba Extract for Aging

“…Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform (TCMSP) is an integrated systems pharmacology platform of Chinese herbal medicines that covers chemicals, targets and drug targets, as well as pharmacokinetic properties for compounds involving oral bioavailability, drug-likeness, blood-brain-barrier, intestinal epithelial permeability, aqueous solubility and etc [15]. In this study, oral bioavailability (OB) and drug-likeness (DL) were utilized to screen out the chemical constituents meeting OB ≥ 30% and DL ≥ 0.18 simultaneously [16]. In addition, the active ingredients with low oral bioavailability and remarkable e cacy reported in the literature were included.…”

Network Pharmacology‐Based Investigation of the System‐Level Molecular Mechanisms of the Hematopoietic Activity of Samul‐Tang, a Traditional Korean Herbal Formula

“…To investigate the underlying relationship between the targets interacting with the active ingredients in SMT, we built a PPI network comprised of 123 nodes and 333 edges for the myelosuppression-associated SMT targets ( Figure 4). e centralization and heterogeneity of the PPI network were 0.411 and 2.249, respectively, which suggested that the network may contain hubs, nodes with a large number of interactions [63,100,[103][104][105]. Here, a node was determined to be a hub if its degree is greater than or equal to twice the average node degree of the network [106,107].…”

Network pharmacology-based study on the mechanism of Yiganling capsule in hepatitis B treatment

“…OB refers to the relative amount of drug absorbed into systemic blood circulation after administration by the extravascular route and reflects whether the compound has a key indicator of intrinsic activity. Many compounds fail to produce therapeutic effects due to the lack of kinetic characteristics (especially oral bioavailability) and are unable to reach in vivo targets [15]. The OB values were obtained on a bioinformatics system using the OBioavail 1.1 model, which calculates the relationship between the composition and the P4503A4 enzyme and transporter (p-glycoprotein).…”