Molecular Mechanism of Jinchan Oral Liquid in the Treatment of Children with Respiratory Syncytial Virus Pneumonia Based on Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking Technology

OBJECTIVE: Exploration of the underlying molecular mechanism of Jinchan Oral Liquid (JOL) in treating children with the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) pneumonia to provide new evidence for the clinical application. METHODS: The active components and target genes of JOL were screened by the TCMSP database. The targets of RSV pneumonia were obtained from the GeneCards, OMIM, DrugBank, and PharmGKB database. Then, we constructed the active component-target network and screened the core genes. The overlaps were screened for PPI network analysis, GO analysis, and KEGG analysis. Finally, result validation was performed by molecular docking. RESULTS: According to the screening criteria of the ADME, 74 active compounds of JOL were obtained; after removing redundant targets, we selected 180 potential targets. By screening the online database, 893 RSV pneumonia-related targets were obtained. A total of 82 overlapping genes were chosen by looking for the intersection. The STRING online database was used to acquire PPI relationships, and 16 core genes were obtained. GO and KEGG analyses showed that the main pathways of JOL in treating RSV pneumonia include TNF signaling pathway and IL17 signaling pathway. The molecular docking results showed that the active compounds of JOL had a good affinity with the core genes. CONCLUSION: In this study, we preliminarily discussed the main active ingredients, related targets, and pathways of JOL and predicted the pharmacodynamic basis and the potential therapeutic mechanisms of RSV pneumonia. In summary, the network pharmacology strategy may be helpful for the discovery of multitarget drugs against complex diseases.