Study on Medication Rules of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating Constipation through Data Mining and Network Pharmacology

BACKGROUND: To explore the rules of TCM medication in the treatment of constipation in network pharmacology. METHODS: Collect and screen the clinical intervention literature on TCM for constipation from China's national knowledge infrastructure, Wanfang and VIP databases established a database of TCM for constipation, applied R software (3.3.1) to analyze the pattern of prescriptions for TCM for constipation, and summarized the core prescription. The effective active compounds and action targets in the core prescription were screened by Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology (TCMSP) and Traditional Chinese Medicine Integrated Databases (TCMID), constipation-related targets were derived from the DisGeNET and GeneCards databases, Protein-protein interaction network (PPI) was drawn by STRING database, and enrichment analysis was conducted by the Clusterprofiler package in R software (3.3.1). Finally, molecular docking was used to validate the binding ability of candidate compounds to potential targets. RESULTS: Two hundred sixteen target prescriptions were screened through data mining, involving 226 herbs. Association rule analysis results suggested that the “Angelicae sinensis-Radix-dried rehmanniae-Cistanche deserticola-Atractylodes macrocephala-Astragali Radix” was a strong affinity for medicine. Network pharmacology analysis of the core prescription resulted in the screening of 115 candidate compounds, such as quercetin, kaempferol, mangostin, eugenol A, and beta-sitosterol; 131 potential targets, such as PTGS2, PTGS1, and CHRM3; and 160 signaling pathways, such as lipid and atherosclerosis, proteoglycans in cancer, hepatitis B, Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infection, and PI3K/AKT pathways. Molecular docking showed that PTGS1-formononetin, PTGS2-kaempferol, and CHRM3-kaempferol were all well bound and well matched. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a new method and ideas for clinical applications of integrated Chinese and western medicine in treating constipation.