GSK3B and periodontitis: These common targets of periodontitis and vitamin C were used to construct PPI networks in the STRING platform (Fig 3b), and subsequently, the Molecular Complexity Detection (MCODE) algorithm pinpointed densely interconnected network modules; 10 high-probability core targets were subsequently selected based on their DEGREE scores – STAT3, GSK3B, JUN, PTGS2, PRKCA, PPARG, AR, ABCB1, TERT, and PRKCD – were selected (Fig 3c), and molecular docking was performed.