Abstract
Polygonum cuspidatum (Huzhang, HZ) is one of the commonly used traditional Chinese medicines for treating gouty arthritis (GA), but the specific mechanism is not clear. This study employed network pharmacology and molecular docking techniques to examine the molecular mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects of HZ on GA. The network pharmacology approach, including active ingredient and target screening, drug-compound-target-disease network construction, protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks, enrichment analysis, and molecular docking, was used to explore the mechanism of HZ against GA. Ten active ingredients of HZ were predicted to interact with 191 targets, 14 of which interact with GA targets. Network pharmacology showed that quercetin, physovenine, luteolin, and beta-sitosterol are the core components of HZ, and IL (interleukin)-1β, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) are the core therapeutic targets. The mechanism of HZ in GA treatment was shown to be related to the IL-17 signaling pathway, NOD-like receptor signaling pathway, and Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, and is involved in the inflammatory response, positive regulation of gene expression, cellular response to lipopolysaccharide, and other biological processes. Molecular docking showed that all four core compounds had good binding properties to IL-1β, with luteolin and beta-sitosterol showing better docking results than anakinra, suggesting that they could be used as natural IL-1β inhibitors in further experimental studies. The mechanism of action of HZ against GA has multi-target and multi-pathway characteristics, which provides an important theoretical basis for the study of the active ingredients of HZ as natural IL-1β inhibitors.