Renal metabolic profiling of early renal injury and renoprotective effects of Poria cocos epidermis using UPLC Q-TOF/HSMS/MSE.

Poria cocos epidermis is one of ancient traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs), which is usually used for the treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD) for thousands of years in China. A metabonomic approach based on ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight high-sensitivity mass spectrometry (UPLC Q-TOF/HSMS) and a mass spectrometry(Elevated Energy) (MS(E)) data collection technique was developed to obtained a systematic view of the development and progression of CKD and biochemistry mechanism of therapeutic effects of P. cocos epidermis (Fu-Ling-Pi, FLP). By partial least squares-discriminate analysis, 19 metabolites were identified as potential biomarkers of CKD. Among the 19 biomarkers, 10 biomarkers including eicosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, lysoPC(20:4), lysoPC(18:2), lysoPC(15:0), lysoPE(20:0/0:0), indoxyl sulfate, hippuric acid, p-cresol sulfate and allantoin were reversed to the control level in FLP-treated groups. The study indicates that FLP treatment can ameliorate CKD by intervening in some dominating metabolic pathways, such as fatty acid metabolism, phospholipid metabolism, purine metabolism and tryptophan metabolism. This work was for the first time to investigate the FLP therapeutic effect based on metabonomics technology, which is a potentially powerful tool to study the TCMs.