Metabonomic analysis of biochemical changes in the plasma and urine of carrageenan-induced rats after treatment with Yi-Guan-Jian decoction

• We had used the high throughput HPLC-MS/MS technology to analyze the metabolites.
• We had used metabonomics method to monitor the changes of endogenous substance of carrageenin-induced inflammation.
• We had used visual data processing method to analyze the related data, it is more accuracy and conveniently.

The urinary and plasma metabonomics method based on a Agilent-1200 LC system coupled to an Agilent-6410 mass spectrometry (HPLC–MS/MS) had been established to investigate the anti-inflammatory activity of Yi-Guan-Jian (YGJ) decoction and explore its potential anti-inflammatory mechanism. Rat acute inflammation was induced by subcutaneous injection of carrageenan in hind paws. Multivariate statistical approaches, such as principal component analysis (PCA), partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and XCMS online software were used to distinguish normal control group (NG), model group (MG), aspirin-treated group (AG) and Yi-Guan-Jian decoction group (YGJ), aimed at finding out the potential biomarkers. There was a clear separation among the four groups in PCA model. Twenty-five potential biomarkers had been identified using PCA, PLS-DA and XCMS online software. Lastly, we had an enrichment for the related metabolic pathways and screened out the pathways that influence the organism a lot in MetPA, then five mainly metabolism: tryptophan metabolism, lipid metabolism, oxidative stress, glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism, taurine and hypotaurine metabolism were found. In this study, YGJ showed good anti-inflammatory effects and it could suppress the changes of pathologic inflammatory cytokines of carrageenan-induced rat paw edema (CIE). There might be a correlation between these results and the regulation of the disturbed metabolites in urine and plasma. This study demonstrates that metabonomics is a powerful methodology to gain insight into the mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula in therapy.