Yuanhuapine-induced intestinal and hepatotoxicity were correlated with disturbance of amino acids, lipids, carbohydrate metabolism and gut microflora function: A rat urine metabonomic study.

This research was designed to study metabonomic characteristics of the toxicity induced by yuanhuapine, a major bioactive diterpenoid in a well-known traditional Chinese medicine-Genkwa Flos. General observation, blood biochemistry and histopathological examination were used to reflect yuanhuapine-induced toxicity. Urine samples from rats in control and yuanhuapine treated rats were analyzed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF/MS). Pattern recognition methods including principal components analysis (PCA), partial least-squared discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), orthogonal partial least-squared discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) and computational system analysis were integrated to obtain comprehensive metabonomic profiling and pathways of the biological data sets. The results suggested that yuanhuapine could induce intestinal and liver damage. And 14 endogenous metabolites as biomarkers related to the amino acids metabolism, lipids metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism and gut microflora were significantly changed in the urine of yuanhuapine treated rats, which were firstly constructed the metabolomic feature profiling and metabolite interaction network of yuanhuapine-induced injury using pattern recognition methods and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) approach. The present study showed that yuanhuapine-induced intestinal and hepatic toxicity were correlated with disturbance of amino acids metabolism, lipids metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism and gut microflora.