Potential application of traditional Chinese medicine in cerebral ischemia—Focusing on ferroptosis

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has attracted a great deal of attention in the treatment of cerebral ischemia is credited with the remarkable neuroprotective effects. However, the imperfect functional mechanism of TCM is a major obstacle to their application. Many studies have been conducted to illustrate the pathophysiology of post-ischemic cerebral ischemia by elucidating the neuronal cell death pathway. Meanwhile, a new type of cell death, ferroptosis, is gradually being recognized in various diseases and is becoming a new pathway of therapeutic intervention strategy to solve many health problems. Especially since ferroptosis has been found to be closely involved into the pathogenesis of cerebral ischemia, it has been considered as a key target in the treatment of cerebral ischemia. Therefore, this paper reviews the latest research findings about the treatment of cerebral ischemia with TCM focused on ferroptosis as a target. Also, in order to explores the possibility of a new approach to treat cerebral ischemia with TCM, we discusses the correlation between ferroptosis and other cell death pathways such as apoptosis and autophagy, which would provide references for the following researches.

Study on Neuroprotective Mechanism of Houshiheisan in Ischemic Stroke Based on Transcriptomics and Experimental Verification

“…Ischemic stroke is mainly a disorder of blood supply to the brain resulting from various causes, contributing to a clinical syndrome characterized by hypoxic-ischemic damage to brain tissue [ 28 ]. Besides vascular recanalization, TCM has shown remarkable neuroprotective effects and gained great attention in treating ischemic stroke [ 29 ]. In TCM, HSHS was created by Zhang et al to treat stroke, following the pathogenesis of deficiency of genuine qi and excess of pathogenic factor [ 12 ].…”

Targeting ferroptosis unveils a new era for traditional Chinese medicine: a scientific metrology study

“…In the realm of oncology, particular active pharmaceutical ingredients in TCM act as ferroptosis inducers, inducing PCD and eliminating malignant cells (Wang et al, 2023b). Conversely, specific components of TCM serve as ferroptosis inhibitors, reducing cytotoxic damage in healthy cells like chondrocytes, neurons, hepatocytes, and cardiomyocytes due to irregularities in iron/GSH/lipid metabolism (Wang et al, 2020;Wu et al, 2021;Zhao et al, 2022;Cao et al, 2023a). This characteristic is in alignment with the TCM philosophical concept of Yin and Yang, which encompasses unity, opposition, and mutual transformation.…”

“…Although several reviews on "ferroptosis-TCM" have been published (Wang et al, 2020;Wu et al, 2021;Gao et al, 2022;Liu et al, 2022;Zhao et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2023b;Ding et al, 2023;Shi et al, 2023;Xie et al, 2023), there remains a significant need for comprehensive scientometric analyses and detailed summaries encompassing developmental trends, principal institutions/authors, and central research themes. Therefore, this study aims to comprehensively update the advancements in targeting ferroptosis with various TCMs during the previous 11 years.…”