Systemic osteoprotective effects of Epimedii Folium and Ligustri Lucidi Fructus in senile osteoporosis rats by promoting the osteoblastogenesis and osteoclastogenesis based on MLP-ANN model

Senile osteoporosis (SOP), which is caused by unbalanced bone remodeling, leads to significant economic and societal burdens globally. The combination of Epimedii Folium (EF) and Ligustri Lucidi Fructus (LLF) serves as a commonly-used prescription for SOP in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This study aimed to evaluate the osteoprotective effects of EF and LLF in combination on SOP rats based on the constructed multilayer perception (MLP)-artificial neural network (ANN) model. 15 month old male Sprague–Dawley rats were administrated with EF, LLF or the combination of EF and LLF (EFL ameliorated the steatosis in the liver and decreased blood lipids and serum ALT, AST and GGT; enhanced bone remodeling by stimulating the expression of ALP and TRACP. At the molecular levels, EFL meanwhile, EF&LLF stimulated osteoblastogenesis by enhancing the expression of TGF-β1, BMP2, Wnt5a and IGF-1. According to our established MLP model, EF&LLF has a better effect on osteoclastogenesis or steoblastogenesis in SOP rats than EF or LLF. These findings demonstrate that the systemic bone protective effects of EF&LLF by promoting bone remodeling in aging rats might be a substitute medicine for the treatment of SOP.