ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE To explore the mechanisms of the volatiles of Wendan granule for the treatment of senile dementia,network pharmacology method integrating absorption,distribution,metab-olism, and excretion (ADME) screening, target fishing, network constructing, pathway analyzing, and correlated diseases prediction was applied. METHODS Twelve small molecular compounds of WDG were selected as the objects from 74 volatiles with the relative abundances above 2%,and their ADME parameters were collected from Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology platform (TCMSP), and then the corresponding targets, genes, pathways and diseases were predicted according to the data provided by TCMSP,DrugBank,Uniport and the Database for Annotation,Visualization and Integrated Discovery(DAVID).The related pathways and correlation analysis were explored by the Kyoto Encyclo-pedia and Genomes (KEGG) database. Finally, the networks of compound-target, target-pathway and pathway-disease of WDG were constructed by Cytoscape software. RESULTS Twelve compounds interacted with 49 targets, of which top three targets were Gamma-aminobutyric acid receptor subunit alpha-1 (GABRA1), Prostaglandin G/H synthase 2 (PGHS-2) and Sodium-dependent noradrenaline transporter.Interestingly,these targets were highly associated with depression,insomnia and Alzheimer′s disease that mainly corresponded to mental and emotional illnesses. CONCLUSION The integrated network pharmacology method provides precise probe to illuminate the molecular mechanisms of volatiles of WDG for relieving senile dementia related syndromes,which will also facilitate the application of traditional Chinese medicine in modern medicine,as well as follow-up studies such as upgrading the quality stan-dard of clinical medicine and novel drug development.