With the development of the society, the number of people who got the
nephrotic syndrome (NS) is going up roughly. Therefore, finding a better way to treat NS is becoming a major global public health issue. As we all know,
traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), especially
Fangji Huangqi Decoction (
FHD), has a long history and has good curative effects on NS. However, the mechanism of
FHD treating NS has not been clearly elucidated. To address this problem, a feasible system was developed by metabolomics and integrative pharmacology approach. To study the mechanisms of Chinese medical formula
FHD treating NS based on metabolomics and integrative pharmacology. In this study, a NMR based metabolomics approach coupled with biochemical assay and Western Blot had been employed to study the protective effect of
FHD against
adriamycin-induced nephropathy using rat model. And we proposed a integrative pharmacology-based method, which combined chemical ingredients database building, target identification and network analysis. These were aimed to decipher the mechanisms of action for the
FHD in NS treatment. Multivariate analysis revealed that 13 of 16 perturbed metabolites could be reversed by
FHD, and the MetaboAnalyst analysis revealed that the anti-
nephrotic syndrome effect of
FHD was probably related with regulation of
alanine,
aspartate and
glutamate metabolism,
citrate cycle,
pyruvate metabolism,
cysteine and
methionine metabolism and
glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism. The integrative pharmacology analysis revealed 93 potential targets for
FHD, and suggested that the protective effect of
FHD on the
nephrotic syndrome was probably related with the regulation of immune, and energy metabolic and
fatty acid metabolic. In addition, both the metabolomics and the integrative pharmacology are focus together on the
alanine,
aspartate and
glutamate metabolism pathway. These metabolites changes and the core targets changes, as well as the metabolite-target pathway network provide insights into the mechanisms of
FHD treating
nephrotic syndrome, and further studies are needed to validate the bioactive compounds responsible for the anti-
nephrotic syndrome effect of
FHD.