Cornus officinalis Protects Against Steroid-Induced Osteonecrosis of the Femoral Head Through Inhibiting Inflammatory Responses and Apoptosis via Network Pharmacology and Experimental Validation.

BACKGROUND

Steroid-related osteonecrosis of the femoral head (SONFH) is bone death resulting from the use of chronic glucocorticoids. Due to its high incidence and lack of effective treatment, which is still a challenging problem in orthopedic surgery. Cornus officinalis (SZY) is usually used as a traditional use for the treatment of SONFH and plays a major role in traditional prescriptions, however, the specific pharmacological mechanisms of action remain unclear. This study is to investigate the mechanisms of SZY against SONFH via network pharmacology and experimental validation analysis.

METHODS

The active components and related targets of SZY and related-SONFH targets were collected from public databases. The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) functional enrichment analyses were performed to predict the core targets and pathways of SZY in the treatment of SONFH. Then, AutoDock Vina was used for molecular docking verification. Finally, the reliability of the network pharmacology prediction results was verified through a mice SONFH model in vivo experiment.

RESULTS

Through the identification of common targets between the active components of SZY and targets related to SONFH, a total of 66 shared targets were identified. The topological analysis of the PPI network identified nine key targets. GO and KEGG enrichment analyses showed that SZY treatment for SONFH mainly include apoptosis and IL-17 signaling pathways. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations results indicated that the active components in SZY exhibited high affinity for these targets. Animal experiments demonstrated that SZY reduced femoral head damage in SONFH mice, significantly downregulating TNF (p<0.01) and IL-6 (p<0.05) and modulating Bcl-2/Caspase-3 expression.

CONCLUSION

Our study provides preclinical evidence that SZY alleviates SONFH by suppressing inflammation and apoptosis, supporting its traditional use and informing further translational research.