To compare the effect of reinforcing Shen method (RSM) and activating blood method (ABM) in treating osteoarthritis (OA) at the molecular level.
The physical and chemical characteristics of components from respective recipes of RSM and ABM, and network features of component-target interaction network were analyzed by computer simulation methods including chemical space, molecular docking, and biological network, etc.
The chemical components of RSM and ABM were scarcely scattered with larger overlapping. Among established networks, the distribution of network features was partially similar in RSM and ABM. The average target number correlated with each component was 1.86 in RSM and 2.11 in ABM respectively. Each average target number was respectively correlated with 4.46 compounds and 3.93 compounds, reflecting multi-component and multi-target actions.
Computer simulation could intuitively trace out similarities and differences of two different methods and their interaction with targets, which revealed that the compatibility of RSM and ABM could have broader protein targets and potential synergism at the molecular level.