Study on material base and action mechanism of compound Danshen dripping pills for treatment of atherosclerosis based on modularity analysis

Ethnopharmacological relevanceTraditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used in China and its surrounding countries in clinical treatments for centuries-long time. However, due to the complexity of TCM constituents, both action mechanism and material base of TCM remain nearly unknown.Aim of the studyThe present study was designed to uncover the action mechanism and material base of TCM in a low-cost manner.Materials and methodsCompound Danshen dripping pills (DSP) is a widely used TCM for treatment of atherosclerosis, and was researched here to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. We constructed a heterogeneous network for DSP, identified the significant network module, and analyzed the primary pharmacological units by performing GO and pathways enrichment analysis.ResultsTwo significant network modules were identified from the heterogeneous network of DSP, and three compounds out of four hub nodes in the network were found to intervene in the process of atherosclerosis. Moreover, 13 out of 20 enriched pathways that were ranked in top 10 corresponding to both the two pharmacological units were found to be involved in the process of atherosclerosis.ConclusionsQuercetin, luteolin and apigenin may be the main active compounds which modulate the signaling pathways, such as metabolism of xenobiotics by cytochrome P450, retinol metabolism, etc. The present method helps reveal the action mechanism and material base of DSP for treatment of atherosclerosis.

Graphical abstractIn this paper we proposed a modularity analysis method to investigate the material base and action mechanism of Compound Danshen dripping pills (DSP), a widely used TCM formula for treatment of atherosclerosis. As the above figure shows, nine bioactive compounds modulate 10 enriched pathways, in which 6 pathways (in red ellipses) were verified to participate in the process of atherosclerosis. Luteolin and apigenin are two of the most important compounds. These compounds and pathways hold great promise to influence the development of atherosclerosis.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (390 K)Download as PowerPoint slide