Molecular mechanism and rule of TCM prescriptions containing Alismatis Rhizoma in the clinical treatment of hyperlipidemia based on data mining and network pharmacology

Objective

The clinical treatment rules and mechanism of Alismatis Rhizoma prescription for hyperlipidemia treatment were analyzed based on data mining and network pharmacology.

Methods

The CNKI, Wanfang, and PubMed databases were searched to collect the prescriptions containing Alismatis Rhizoma for the treatment of hyperlipidemia, and the Apriori algorithm was employed to mine the hidden drug compatibility rules and drug pairs in each prescription. The chemical components and target information of drug pairs were analyzed using the TTCMSP, PubChem, and SwissTargetPrediction databases, and the disease targets were screened using the DrugBank database. The intersection of the two was also obtained. Cytoscape was employed to obtain the core targets of the prescription for the treatment of hyperlipidemia, and then the KEGG pathway of the intersection targets was enriched and analyzed using the DAVID database. Molecular docking of core chemical components and key targets and visualization of the docking results were performed using AutoDock and the Discovery Studio 2016 Client platform, respectively. Finally, it was verified by in vitro cell experiments.

Results

The drug pair with the highest support was hawthorn–Salvia miltiorrhiza–Alismatis Rhizoma. This pair contained 112 active components, 384 targets highly correlated with the active components, 111 targets related to hyperlipidemia, and 45 intersection targets of drugs and diseases. Biological function and target pathway enrichment analysis revealed that the biological process of hawthorn–Salvia miltiorrhiza–Alismatis Rhizoma in the treatment of hyperlipidemia was mainly related to steroid metabolism, drug reaction, and redox process. The results of in vitro experiments indicated that Alisol A could reduce cell lipid accumulation and total cholesterol (TC) and TG levels, upregulate of ABCB1 and downregulate of CYP1A2, CYP3A4, and SLC6A4 mRNA expression.

Conclusion

Network pharmacology analysis revealed that the hawthorn–Salvia miltiorrhiza–Alismatis Rhizoma herb pair can treat hyperlipidemia through multiple targets and pathways, which provide a basis for further study of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of hyperlipidemia.