Network Pharmacology Approach and Experimental Verification of Huashi Dingtong Decoction Against Knee Osteoarthritis
Abstract Background: The aim of this study is to clarify the ingredients and targets of HSDTT against KOA by network pharmacology,and to verify the mechanism of HSDTT in treatment of KOA in vivo.Methods: Ingredient-target network for HSDTT and KOA was created to identify the potential targets, protein-protein interaction network was used to find the key targets of HSDTT in treatment for KOA, GO enrichment and KEGG pathway was conducted to illuminate the pathway related to KOA treat by HSDTT. Rat model of KOA was established by joint injection in papain.The morphology of cartilage were assessed by H&E. ELISA was used to detect the contents of inflammation cytokines in synovial fluid and synovium. The expression of the pathway protein were assessed by PCR.Results: The results of network pharmacology demonstrate that there are 440 ingredients of HSDTT against knee osteoarthritis by 478 targets.The KEGG enrichment analysis showed that PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, MAPK signaling pathway were the key pathways for HSDTT to treat KOA. Morphology of cartilage was improved in the HSDTT group when compared with the model group. Our experiment show that HSDTT can reduced the expressions of p38 and p53 in cartilage, increased the expression of collagenⅡ. The contents of IL-1β and TNF-α in the synovium and COX-2 and PGE-2 in synovial fluid were decreased significantly in the HSDTT group when compared with the model group.Conclusions: Our study indicadites that HSDTT is capable to alleviate inflammation and delay the progression of KOA by p38MAPK signaling pathway.