Study on Anti-pneumonia Mechanisms of Honeysuckle Based on Network Pharmacology

Abstract Background: Honeysuckle is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. It is widely used in the treatment of respiratory infectious diseases in Asia and even worldwide reported in the literature. However, its mechanism remains unclear. Pneumonia is one of the most common clinical manifestations of respiratory infections. This study is aim to find out the molecular mechanism of honeysuckle in the treatment of pneumonia.Methods: LPS-induced pneumonia rats were administered with honeysuckle decoction and compared its efficacy with dexamethasone. The components in honeysuckle decoction were analyzed by liquid-phase mass spectrometry. The target proteins for those components were obtained by database search, target fishing and text mining methods, and then were matched with the genes of pneumonia in the CTD database. Analyzed interactions of target protein by using String database, enrichment analysis by David database, molecular docking was performed by AUTODOCK and PyRx. Its related network diagrams drew by Cytoscape.Results: Our results indicate that honeysuckle can alleviate the inflammation of rat lung tissue to a certain extent, and has similar therapeutic effects as dexamethasone. There are 31 compounds in honeysuckle, and 366 genes associated with these compounds and pneumonia. Among them, 18 of the top 5%, including GAPDH, TNF, FOS, VEGFA, BDNF, etc., were enriched in pathway closely related to pneumonia: Glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, Nitrogen metabolism, and Neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, etc. The results of molecular docking confirmed that Inosito binds to the PTEN protein of the Phosphatidylinositol signaling system pathway.Conclusions: This study suggests that honeysuckle can play a role in the treatment of pneumonia by affecting multiple targets and pathways, of which Inosito-PTEN-Phosphatidylinositol signaling system may be the most important mechanism. This reflects the multi-target multi-pathway of traditional Chinese medicine, and has a certain specific therapeutic effect on the disease. By interfering with the signaling pathways of the body cells, honeysuckle can be used as a drug candidate for clinical pneumonia treatment.