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Background: The Fangji Dihuang formulation (FJDHF) is a widely recognized Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) formula that consists of five plant drugs: Stephaniae Tetrandrae Radix, Cinnamomi Ramulus, Rehmanniae Radix, Saposhnikoviae Radix, and Glycyrrhiza Urensis Fisch. This formulation has been known to exhibit clinical therapeutic effects in the treatment of inflammatory skin diseases. However, there is a lack of pharmacological research on its anti-atopic dermatitis (AD) activity. Methods: To investigate the potential anti-AD activity of FJDHF, DNCB was used to induce AD-like skin inflammation in the back of mice. Following successful modeling, the mice were administered FJDHF orally. The extent of the inflammatory skin lesions was recorded at day 4, 7, 14 and 28. UHPLC-Q-Exactive Orbitrap MS was used to identify and match the compounds present in FJDHF with ITCM, TCMIP and TCMSID. In silico predictions of potential target proteins of the identified compounds were obtained from SwishTargetPrediction, ITCM and TargetNet databases. AD-related genes were identified from GSE32924 data set, and FJDHF anti-AD hub genes were identified by MCODE algorithm. ClueGo enrichment analysis was employed to identify the core pathway of FJDHF's anti-AD effect. To further investigate the anti-AD effect of FJDHF, single-cell RNA sequencing data set (GSE148196) from AD patients was analyzed to determine the target cells and signaling pathways of FJDHF in AD. Finally, rt-PCR, flow cytometry, and mouse back skin RNA sequencing were utilized to validate our findings. Results: FJDHF was found to be effective in improving the degree of the AD-like lesions in the mice. Network pharmacological analysis revealed the core pathway of FJDHF to be the IL-17 signaling pathway, which is interactively associated with cytokines. Single-cell RNA sequencing analysis suggested that FJDHF may play an anti-AD role by influencing dendritic cells. Flow cytometry and rt-PCR results showed that FJDHF can reduce the influence of AD sample of IL-4, IFN-γ and the expression of IL-17. The RNA sequencing of mouse back skin also confirmed our conclusion. Conclusion: FJDHF may inhibit DNCB-induced AD-like skin inflammation in mice by inhibiting the IL-17 signaling pathway. Thus, FJDHF can be considered as a potential therapeutic agent for AD.
RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy differences between fire needling therapy and oxycycline tablets for the treatment of moderate to severe acne vulgaris. METHODS: Sixty cases of moderate to severe acne vulgaris were randomly divided into a fire needling group and a medication group, 30 cases in each one. The pricking method of fire needling at Ashi points around damaged skin was applied in the fire needling group, once every five days for totally 4 times. The oral administration of oxycycline tablets, 100 mg, was applied in the medication group, twice daily for 20 days, also external application of adapalene gel before sleep was adopted. The fading time of skin damage, including papule, pustule, nodule and cyst in the two groups was recorded and clinical efficacy was compared. After the treatment, two-month follow-up was performed to observe the recurrence rate in the two groups. RESULTS: The curative rate was 69.0% (20/29) in the fire needling group, which was statistically different from 40.0% (12/30) in the medication group (P < 0.05). The fading time of each type of skin damage in the fire needling group was shorter than that in the medication group [papule: (2.67 +/- 0.66) d vs (4.36 +/- 0.61) d; pustule: (2.47 +/- 0.57) d vs (4.27 +/- 0.55) d; nodule: (7.76 +/- 1.06) d vs (9.88-1.30) d; cyst: (11.81 +/- 1.54) d vs (14.79 +/- 0.89) d, all P < 0.05]. The recurrence rate was 46.4% (13/28) in the fire needling group, which was not significantly different from 44.0% (11/24) in the medication group (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The acne vulgaris could be fast and effectively treated by fire needling therapy, which has shorter fading time than oxycycline tablets. However, the preventive effect is not different between the two theraies.