- Academic Editor
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Background: Polygonum hydropiper L (PH) was widely used to
treat dysentery, gastroenteritis, diarrhea and other diseases. Coptis
chinensis (CC) had the effects of clearing dampness-heat, purging fire, and
detoxifying. Study confirmed that flavonoids in PH and alkaloids in CC alleviated
inflammation to inhibit the development of intestinal inflammation. However, how
PH-CC affects UC was unclear. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the
mechanism of PH-CC on ulcerative colitis (UC) through network pharmacology and
in vivo experiments. Methods: The active ingredients and
targets of PH-CC and targets of UC were screened based on related databases. The
core targets of PH-CC on UC was predicted by protein-protein interaction network
(PPI), and then the Gene Ontology-biological processes (GO-BP) function
enrichment analysis was conducted using the Database for Annotation,
Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) database. The binding activity
between pyroptosis proteins, core targets and effective ingredients were verified
based on molecular docking technology. Finally, combined with the results of
network pharmacology and literature research, the mechanism of PH-CC against UC
was verified by in vivo experiments. Results:
There were 23 active components and 191 potential targets in PH-CC, 5275
targets in UC, and 141 co-targets. GO-BP functional analysis of 141 co-targets
showed that the first 20 biological processes were closely related to
inflammation and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation. Furthermore, core targets
had good binding activity with the corresponding compounds. Animal experiment
indicated that PH-CC effectively prevented weight loss in UC mice, reduced the
disease activity index (DAI) score, maintained colon length, suppressed
myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity, inhibited pyroptosis protein expression, and
downregulated the levels of IL-18 and IL-1