Therapeutic Potential of Herbal Saponin Constituents in Myocardial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury: A Review and Network Pharmacological Analysis
Yulei Wang, Mingze Li, Long Liu, Lijun Zhang, Chang Liu, Rui Dong, Wei Li, Liang Xiao, Lulu Wang, Jing ZhangIntroduction:
Myocardial Ischemia (MI) is one of the leading causes of death from cardiovascular disease. While reperfusion restores blood supply to ischemic areas, the primary treatment for MI, it also induces Myocardial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury (MI/RI). Saponins, as one of the fundamental active constituents in traditional Chinese medicine, have been demonstrated to effectively mitigate MI/RI. This review summarizes 30 saponin constituents with the ability to improve MI/RI, analyzes the possible mechanisms of action of the 30 saponin constituents for the treatment of MI/RI and their potential targets of action in conjunction with network pharmacology, and reports the latest research progress of saponin constituents for the improvement of MI/RI in order to lay a foundation for future clinical treatment and scientific research.
Materials and Methods:
Literature published up to March 2025 was searched from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), PubMed, Web of Science, and Science Direct databases. Screening keywords for “Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury”, “Myocardial ischemia reperfusion”, “MI/RI”, and “saponin” involved a total of 30 saponins. The possible mechanisms of action of saponin components for MI/RI and their potential targets of action were analyzed in conjunction with network pharmacology.
Results:
The 30 saponins exerted their anti-MI/RI effects mainly through attenuating oxidative stress, inhibiting calcium overload, modulating energy metabolism disorders, and inhibiting inflammation.
Discussion:
All results indicate that 30 saponins can improve MI/RI through different targets and pathways.
Conclusions:
Chinese medicinal saponin components play a key role in improving MI/RI and have a broad application prospect. In addition, the network pharmacology results revealed their potential targets and mechanisms of action in MI/RI treatment. In the future, further experiments are needed to elucidate their specific mechanism of action, thereby laying the foundation for the scientific utilization of saponin components.