Exploration of the pharmacological mechanism of herbal medicines against hepatic disorder: A systematic review and network pharmacological analysis

Ethnopharmacology relevance: Liver problems are severe risks to human health and the most significant cause of death worldwide. For decades, the efficient treatment of hepatic disorders has been achieved through various herbal formulations and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Network pharmacology has been employed to develop drug-target-disease networks and to study the active phytoconstituents and multi-target action mechanisms for these formulations.

Aim

To summarize the recent application status of network pharmacology in the treatment of hepatic disorder through a literature review and to review the related databases, plant compounds, traditional herbal formulation, and their mechanism of action for combating hepatic disorder.

Materials and methods

In this review, literature was searched in PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar using the keywords “liver disorder’, “hepatoprotective formulation,” “traditional Chinese medicine,” “herbal medicine,” and “network pharmacology” from 1995 to 2023.

Results

This review presents current research on various herbal formulations, including traditional Chinese medicinal formulas and other plant extracts, with an emphasis on the utilization of plant bioactive chemicals, predicted targets, mechanism of action, and their anticipated signal pathways in the treatment of hepatic disorders. It also summarizes the relevant databases and application of network pharmacology in hepatology.

Conclusions

This article offers details on a recent study using the network pharmacology technique, which will not only give a new research paradigm for natural products but also improve hepatoprotective drug development strategies.