ABSTRACT Sleep disorder is a widespread health concern with limited safe therapy options. Medicine‐food‐homology (MFH) plants offer a promising source for developing a natural sleep‐improving dietary supplement because of their nutritional and medicinal qualities. According to traditional medicine principles and the medicinal properties of MFH herbs, we created an MFH‐based sleep‐modulating formula (SMF), which consists of Ziziphus spinosa semen, Gastrodiae elata rhizome, Dendrobium officinale , Polygonati rhizome , Panax notoginseng flower and Radix Glycyrrhizae preparata. The main active components and quality marker of SMF were analysed. A murine pentobarbital‐induced sleep model was constructed to evaluate the sleep‐modulating effect of SMF. The results showed that 35 pharmacologically active compounds were identified from SMF. Seven compounds were selected as quality markers to control the quality of SMF. Notably, oral administration of SMF improved the disorder of the neurotransmitter system and exerted a synergistic hypnotic effect with pentobarbital by improving the occurrence rate of sleep and shortening sleep latency. Network pharmacology analysis predicted signalling pathways, such as neuroactive ligand‐receptor interactions, serotonergic/dopaminergic synapses and thyroid hormone signalling, to be involved in the sleep modulation of SMF. Molecular docking revealed that SMF exerts therapeutic effects through interactions with key targets, including HTR2A, HTR2C, ADRB2, DRD2, GABRA1, GABBR1 and MAOA. In conclusion, these findings suggest that SMF has a potential sleep‐promoting effect by restoring neurotransmitter balance and mediating neurological pathways in mice. This study also elucidates the active constituents and sets quality control criteria for SMF, facilitating its translational application.
Ting et al. (Thu,) studied this question.