Study on the Mechanism of Salvia miltiorrhiza in the Treatment of Traumatic Bone Defects

Traumatic bone defect is one of the major orthopedic diseases in clinics, and its incidence is increasing year by year. And repairing traumatic bone defects is a very difficult problem in clinics at present. The surface of medical titanium-based alloy has good biological properties, and its implant has a certain role in promoting bone in bone tissue. However, titanium-based materials are biologically inert and have no biological activity. As a traditional Chinese medicine, Salvia miltiorrhiza has the efficacy of treating bone diseases and promoting bone healing. The curative effect can be better exerted by loading the traditional Chinese medicine active compound Salvia miltiorrhiza on the surface of the titanium implant in a certain way. At present, due to the complex chemical composition of Salvia miltiorrhiza, the mechanism of its use for the treatment of traumatic bone defects is still unclear. Therefore, in this study, we mainly discussed the potential target and mechanism of Salvia miltiorrhiza in the treatment of traumatic bone defects through network pharmacology, which may provide a scientific basis for the treatment of traumatic bone defects with Salvia miltiorrhiza loaded on the surface of medical titanium-based alloy. We screened out effective compounds and targets of Salvia miltiorrhiza and targets related to traumatic bone defects with the help of relevant databases. The targets of Salvia miltiorrhiza for traumatic bone defects were analyzed by STRING and GeneCards databases, and the results were visualized by constructing a compound-target network, protein-protein interaction network, and compound-target-disease network with Cytoscape 3.7.1 analysis software. Finally, the selected core targets carried out GO and KEGG enrichment. The results showed that 60 main active components were screened from Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge, which could act on 149 targets. There were 33 active components and 70 targets related to traumatic bone defects, respectively. The core targets of Salvia miltiorrhiza in the treatment of traumatic bone defects were MAPK1, MAPK10, MAPK14, TGFB1, and TNF. The results of enrichment analysis showed that Salvia miltiorrhiza might treat traumatic bone defects through an osteogenic differentiation pathway.