How Chinese Medicine functions on COVID-19, based on three Chinese
Medicine prescriptions with 220-1800 years history
Abstract
COVID-19 caused a worldwide pandemic and he therapeutic effect of
traditional Chinese medicine is exciting and promising, but the unclear
biological mechanism and culture differences have led to its limited
acceptance and application. This study selected three basic traditional
Chinese medicine prescriptions for fighting epidemics with 200-1800
years application history and applied systematic network pharmacology to
clarify their biological mechanism. We found that: (1) Five compounds
that played a key role in treating virus pneumonia were screened out and
showed well molecular docking efficiency with COVID-19. And the core hub
gene of all three prescriptions was RB1. (2) In terms of function, the
predicted targets of three Chinese medicine prescriptions were
abundantly expressed in regulating viral replication cycle, regulating
immune and inflammatory response, coagulation function, and cell
proliferation functions. (3) Three prescriptions with completely
different properties and different herbs showed very similar biological
functions, and the same compound may affect the expression of pathway
genes in the same or opposite directions, which reflected the two-way
regulatory characteristics. This study suggested that Chinese medicine
had great potential in the regulation of viral pneumonia cell cycle and
immune microenvironment, and indicated the common biological basis of
Chinese medicine in treatment of COVID-19.