Mechanism of icariin for the treatment of osteoarthritis based on network pharmacology and molecular docking method.

Background: Icarin's mechanism of action in osteoarthritis (OA) was explored using network pharmacology and the GEO database, and then further validated using molecular docking.

Methods: GEO database using network pharmacology identified differential genes in OA based on Icariin's possible targets predicted by pharmmapper database. Combining the differentially expressed genes in OA with the OA-related targets, the overlapping targets were removed.