Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 9 pp 8191—8201
The shared KEGG pathways between icariin-targeted genes and osteoporosis
- 1 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200065, China
- 2 Department of Orthopedics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, Hubei, China
- 3 College of Dental Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA
- 4 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Received: December 30, 2019 Accepted: March 30, 2020 Published: May 7, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103133How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Yu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Osteoporosis is a common metabolic bone disease that affects about 40% of postmenopausal women. Treatment options for osteoporosis are limited, however. Icariin is an herbal substance that has been shown to improve bone mass, but the mechanisms are largely unknown. Using bioinformatics analysis, we have identified the hub genes and KEGG pathways shared between icariin-targeted genes and osteoporosis. The top five shared KEGG pathways were the Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, adipocytokine pathway, neurotrophin signaling pathway, NOD-like receptor signaling, and B cell receptor signaling pathway; the hub genes were RELA, NFKBIA, and IKBKB, belonging to the NF-κB family. The identified icariin-targeted genes are involved in inflammation, insulin resistance, apoptosis, and immune responses, and regulate the PI3K-Akt, NF-κB, MAPK, and JNK signaling pathways. Our in vitro data show that icariin inhibits apoptosis in human mesenchymal stem cells by suppressing JNK/c-Jun signaling pathway. Together, these findings indicate that icariin exerts its anti-osteoporotic function by inhibiting JNK/c-Jun signaling pathway, and suggest that icariin may be a promising treatment option for osteoporosis.