SMAD3 and Hepatic fibrosis: Glycyrrhizin inhibited pro-fibrotic cytokine TGF-β1-mediated pathways, including Smad2, Smad3 as an active ingredient in astragalus saponins (Zhou et al., 2016), changed the pathological morphology and prevented the liver fibrosis induced by the bile duct ligation (BDL) model (Qu et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2018a).