The Potential Mechanism of Wuwei Qingzhuo San against Hyperlipidemia Based on TCM Network Pharmacology and Validation Experiments in Hyperlipidemia Hamster

Abstract

Wuwei Qingzuo San (WWQZS), as a renowned traditional Mongolian patent medicine approved by Chinese State Food and Drug Administration, is used to treat hyperlipidemia, indigestion, and other ailments related to disorder of production of essence and phlegm, a typical abnormal metabolism of blood in traditional Mongolian medicine. A combination of network pharmacology and validation experiments in hyperlipidemia hamster is used to understand the potential mechanism of WWQZS for hypolipidemic effects, further for an integrated concept of traditional theory, bioactive constituents, and molecular mechanism for TMM. Through network pharmacology, we obtained 212 components, 219 predicted targets, and 349 known hyperlipidemia-related targets form public database and used Metascape to carry out enrichment analysis of 43 potential and 45 candidate targets to imply numerous BP concerned with metabolism of lipid, regulation of kinases and MF related to lipid binding, phosphatase binding, and receptor ligand activity that are involved in anti-hyperlipidemia. In addition, KEGG pathways that explicated hypolipidemic effect were involved in pathways including metabolism associated with kinase function according to MAPK signaling pathway, AMPK signaling pathway, and PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. Meanwhile, in HFD-induced hamster model, WWQZS could significantly reduce TC and ALT and help decrease TG, LDL-C as well; liver pathological section implied that WWQZS could relieve liver damage and lipid accumulation. Western blot indicated that WWQZS may upregulate CYP7A1 and activate AMPK to suppress the expression of HMGCR in livers. In conclusion, our results suggest that WWQSZS plays important dual hypolipidemic and liver-protective role in livers in HFD-induced hamster model. Through this research, a new reference is also provided to other researches in the study of ethnopharmacology.