Study on the Antipyretic Mechanism of Baihu Decoction: Network Pharmacology Prediction and Experimental Verification

Abstract

To better understand the antipyretic mechanism of Baihu decoction, the network pharmacology was used to predict its antipyretic components, targets, functions and pathways, and the prediction results were experimentally verified. BATMAN-TCM was used to obtain the components of Baihu decoction, GeneCards was used to screen fever related targets, STRING was used to analyze the protein interaction network of the selected targets. Bioconductor software was used to analyze the gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway, and one of the KEGG pathway analyses was performed by cell inflammation model, and was verified by experiments. In the results, total 263 compounds were screened out, 54 potential antipyretic targets were identified, 84 items were obtained by GO function analysis, and 29 pathways were obtained by KEGG analysis, including hypoxia inducible factor-1, Forkhead box O (FOXO) Ras related protein 1 (Rap1), nuclear factor-κ (NF-κB) and other signalling pathways. In the verification experiment of NF-κB signalling pathway, the expression of NF-κB, Inhibitory kappa B kinase beta (IκKβ) and IκBα protein were significantly difference between the Baihu decoction group (P < 0.01) and the model group (P < 0.05), suggesting that Baihu decoction plays the antipyretic effect by affecting IκKβ, Inhibitory kappa B alpha (IκBα) and NF-κB. In conclusion, the interaction of multiple targets in the antipyretic effect of Baihu Decoction and its biological function and pathways were preliminarily demonstrated.