Abstract: Objective From the basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine based on "differentiated treatment from phlegm theory", the key target and mechanism of Acorus tatarinowii in the treatment of ADHD were discussed by means of network pharmacology.Methods The effective active components and potential targets of Acorus tatarinowii and disease targets of ADHD were screened by traditional Chinese medicine system pharmacology database, analysis platform (TCMSP database) and Genecards database. The common targets were screened on the R software platform; the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed; the "drug-active ingredient-target-disease" relationship was constructed; the GO and KEGG signal pathways were analyzed; pymol was used to visualize the docking results.Results Nine active components of Acorus tatarinowii and 99 intersection targets related to ADHD were screened out. Target proteins such as INS, AKT1, JUN, CASP3 and FOS were potential targets for intervention of ADHD by Acorus tatarinowii. The related targets involved multiple biological processes and molecular functions. The mechanism of Acorus tatarinowii in the treatment of ADHD was closely related to apoptosis-related pathways, inflammation-related pathways, lipid metabolic signal pathways, virus infection pathways and so on.Conclusion A variety of effective components of Acorus tatarinowii play a role through multiple signal pathways and different targets, reflecting the action mechanism and characteristics of multi-components, multi-targets, multi-links and multi-pathways of traditional Chinese medicine, which is helpful to explore the mechanism of Acorus tatarinowii in the treatment of ADHD.

Key words: ADHD, Acorus tatarinowii, Treatment from phlegm theory, Network pharmacology, Child