Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a common disease that affects the quality of life of middle-aged and older men. We investigated the therapeutical effects of Chengshi Beixie Fenqing Decoction (CBFD), a classic
traditional Chinese medicine prescription, on BPH through in vivo model and network pharmacology. Bioactives in CBFD were detected through UPLC-Q-Tof-MS/MS and GC-MS, and filtered by the modified Lipinski's rule. Target
proteins associated with the filtered compounds and BPH are selected from public databases. Venn diagram identified the overlapping target
proteins between the bioactives-interacted target
proteins and the BPH-targeted
proteins. The bioactive-
protein interactive networking of BPH was analyzed through the KEGG pathway on STRING to identify potential
ligand-target and visualized the rich factors on the R packet. After that, the molecular docking test (MDT) was performed between bioactives and target
proteins. It showed that the mechanism of CBFD against BPH was related to 104 signaling pathways of 42 compounds. AKT1, 6-demethyl-4'-methyl-N-methylcoclaurine and
relaxin signaling pathways were selected as a hub target, key bioactivitie and hub signaling pathway, respectively. In addition, three major compounds, 6-demethyl-4'-methyl-N-methylcoclaurine,
isoliensinine and
liensinine, had the highest affinity on MDT for the three crucial target
proteins, AKT1, JUN and MAPK1. These
proteins were associated with the
relaxin signaling pathway, which regulated the level of
nitric oxide and is implicated in both BPH development and CBFD. We concluded that the three key bioactivities found in Plumula nelumbinis of CBFD may contribute to improving BPH condition by activating the
relaxin signaling pathways.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.