Systems Pharmacology Study Of Rhubarb,Magnolia And Citrus Aurantium In Treating Ileus

Ileus is a common acute abdominal disease in clinical practice with complicated pathogenic factors.Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)is widely used in Asia because of its safety and small side effects.Many of the TCM prescriptions have a good effect on the treatment of ileus,and most of these prescriptions contain three herbs Rhubarb,Magnolia and Citrus Aurantium(RMC).However,the pharmacological mechanism of the combination of these three herbs in treating ileus is still unclear.Therefore it is necessary to explore the pharmacological mechanism of RMC in treating ileus.Systems pharmacology(SP)has unique advantages in the study of the mechanism of TCM with its holistic and systematic characteristics.In this paper,a complete database of RMC which contains 311 compounds is established,and 45 RMC active ingredients are obtained by using pharmacokinetic properties screening.Subsequently,65 RMC interacting targets are identified by target recognition.By using network pharmacology analysis,we find that RMC on the one hand directly treats ileus by acting on gastrointestinal system diseases-related targets,and on the other hand indirectly treats ileus caused by inflammation,diabetes and thrombosis through acting on these three diseases-related targets.After pathway analysis,the mechanism of RMC in treating ileus is mainly involved in four pathways,i.e.,Calcium ion,P38/MAPK,PI3K/AKT and JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathways.Comparing RMC with ileus western medicines,we find six proteins are overlapped targets,namely HTR2 A,HTR3A,ACHE,KCNH2,OPRD1 and OPRM1,indicating that these proteins are key targets for the treatment of ileus.Finally,this paper also performs the docking experiment,which provides a good evidence for the pharmacological mechanism of RMC.This article not only reveals the pharmacological mechanism of RMC in treating ileus,but also provides a new SP approach to study the mechanism of TCM in the future.