Abstract: This study was designed to investigate the effect of Artemisia carvifolia on anti-oxidative stress and explore its underlying mechanism in dairy cows by systematic network pharmacology. All the active ingredients of Artemisia carvifolia were obtained by the TCMSP database and the target names were converted into gene names by UniProt protein database; The keyword either “heat stress” or “oxidative stress” was used to search disease-related genes by OMIM, Gene Cards and CTD databases. The intersection of the active ingredients targets and oxidative stress targets were obtained with Venny 2.1 and then imported into the STRING database to construct a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. Then the Cytoscape 3.9.1 software was applied for visual processing and core targets acquisition. The DAVID database performed GO and KEGG enrichment analysis on the common targets of active component and oxidative stress-related diseases. Then the Cytoscape 3.9.1 software was used again to construct the component-targets-pathway network. The results showed that, a total of 19 active components and 217 predicated targets were obtained, and 11 442 genes were targeting heat stress or oxidative stress. A total of 136 genes were intersected by components and oxidative stress. Cytoscape screened 5 key active components and 33 key targets. A total of 11 core target genes were obtained by PPI network analysis. GO function annotation showed that there are 320, 37 and 105 terms of cell components, biological processes and molecular functions, respectively, and 170 pathways were obtained by KEGG pathway enrichment analysis. Based on network pharmacological analysis, it can be concluded that the effect of Artemisia carvifolia against oxidative stress damage of dairy cows acting through multiple components, targets and pathways, thus provide a theoretical reference for further promoting the application of Artemisia carvifolia in dairy cows.

Key words: Artemisia carvifolia, network pharmacology, oxidative stress, dairy cows