1H NMR based metabolomic profiling revealed doxorubicin-induced systematic alterations in a rat model

• DOX-induced toxicity was analyzed by echocardiography and NMR based metabonomics.
• DOX caused disturbances of a wide range of metabolic pathways.
• The changed metabolites were correlated with the echocardiography parameters.

Doxorubicin (DOX) is used as a chemotherapy drug with severe carditoxicity. In this study, an integrated echocardiography along with pathological examination and 1H NMR analysis of multiple biological matrices (urine, serum, heart, and kidney) was employed to systemically assess the toxicity of DOX. Echocardiographic results showed that impaired left ventricular contractility and degenerative pathology lesions in DOX group, which were in consistent with pathology. The endogenous metabolites in the urine, serum, heart and kidney was identified by comparison with the data from the literature and databases. Multivariate analysis, including PCA and OPLS, revealed 8 metabolites in urine, including succinate, 2-ketoglutarate, citrate, hippurate, methylamine, benzoate, allantion, and acetate were the potential changed biomarkers. In serum, perturbed metabolites include elevation of leucine, β-glucose, O-acetyl-glycoprotein, creatine, lysine, glycerin, dimethylglycine, trimethylamine-N-oxide, myo-inositol, and N-acetyl-glycoprotein, together with level decreases of acetone, lipid, lactate, glutamate, phosphocholine, acetoacetate and pyruvate. For heart, DOX exposure caused decline of lipid, lactate, leucine, alanine, glutamate, choline, xanthine, glycerin, carnitine, and fumarate, together with elevation of glutamine, creatine, inosine, taurine and malate. Metabolic changes of kidney were mainly involved in the accumulation of α-glucose, lactate, phosphocholine, betaine, threonine, choline, taurine, glycine, urea, hypoxanthine, glutamate, and nicotinamide, coupled with reduction of asparagine, valine, methionine, tyrosine, lysine, alanine, leucine, ornithine, creatine, lipid, and acetate. In addition, alterations of urinary metabolites exhibited a time-dependent manner. Complementary evidences by multiple matrices revealed disturbed pathways concerning energy metabolism, fatty acids oxidation, amino acids and purine metabolism, choline metabolism, and gut microbiota-related metabolism. In addition, the change of endogenous metabolites in rats urine, serum, heart and kidney were correlated with the echocardiography parameters. This integrative study should help to develop a systematic understanding of cardiomyopathy-related diseases and their metabolic events.

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