Abstract: Objective    To reveal the pharmacological mechanism of RunZao ZhiYang capsule (RZZY) in treating eczema through network pharmacology and animal validation strategies.    Methods Twenty-three components of RZZY were selected as research objects, and the target of prescription was screened by using the database, and the target was enriched by KEGG pathway by using Metascape database. The "composition-target-pathway" network was constructed by Cytoscape software, and the associated pathways of eczema were screened. Animal experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of RZZY on eczema, and verify the regulatory effect of RZZY on key targets.    Results    There were 72 targets associated with RZZY and eczema, including JAK2, STAT3, PIK3R1, AKT1, MAPK1, etc. Key signal pathways such as AGE-RAGE, TNF, Th17 cell differentiation and PI3K-Akt have been enriched by KEGG. Animal studies  revealed that RZZY significantly reduced skin swelling, surface ulceration and penetration in eczema model rats, and decreased eczema area and severity index score, skin thickness and pathological score, confirming the down-regulation effect of RZZY on key eczema targets JAK2 and STAT3 proteins, which was consistent with the predicted results of network pharmacology.   Conclusions   This study, combined with network pharmacology and in vivo animal experiments, reveals the mechanism of RZZY on eczema, providing theoretical basis for its clinical application.

Key words: Runzao Zhiyang capsule; ,  ,  Network pharmacology; ,  , Eczema; ,  , Animal verification