Pharmacological Analysis of Xuanfei Huazhuo Prescription in Treatment of Coronavirus Disease-2019 / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:The targets and signaling pathways of Xuanfei Huazhuo prescription (XFHZP) for the treatment of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) were explored, and its possible action mechanisms were described through network pharmacology and basic analysis of modern pharmacology. Method:The compounds and targets in XFHZP were collected through TCMSP and BATMAN-TCM databases. The targets of COVID-19 were studied by GeneCards, NCBI and CTD databases. The PPI network was constructed through STRING database. The networks of "herb-meridian" and "traditional Chinese medicines-compounds-targets-disease" were generated by Cytoscape 3.7.0. Then, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes（KEGG） analysis and Gene Ontology（GO） analysis were made for shared targets through the Omicshare platform. In addition, the disease targets of multiple organ injury, immune injury and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) were retrieved and then mapped with XFHZP. The ratio of intersection targets to XFHZP's targets was calculated. Result:XFHZP has 10 traditional Chinese medicines in total, including 6 medicines with the meridian tropism to lung, 5 medicines with the meridian tropism to the spleen and 5 medicines with the meridian tropism to the stomach. There were 409 compounds and 2 271 targets. There were 8 same inflammatory factors in targets between XFHZP and COVID-19, and each inflammatory factor corresponded to multiple compounds. XFHZP and COVID-19 had 135 intersection targets, and 36 key targets were screened out. A total of 172 signaling pathways were screened out through KEGG signal pathway enrichment (P<0.05). There were 4 000 biological processes, 254 cell components, and 408 molecular functions (P<0.05) according to GO analysis. XFHZP had many common targets with various organ damage targets and immune damage targets, with the ratio of about 7.6%-97.8%. XFHZP had 173 intersection targets with SARS. Conclusion:XFHZP may treat COVID-19 through anti-inflammatory, organ protecting and immune effects. It will provide a certain theoretical basis for the development of drugs for COVID-19.