Dendrobium huoshanense polysaccharide prevents ethanol-induced liver injury in mice by metabolomic analysis

The prevalence of alcohol consumption has increased in modern dietary life and alcoholic liver injury can follow. Dendrobium huoshanense polysaccharide (DHP) is a homogeneous polysaccharide isolated from Dendrobium huoshanense, which possesses hepatoprotection function. In this study, we investigated the metabolic profiles of serum and liver tissues extracts from control, ethanol-treated and DHP\ethanol-treated mice using a UHPLC/LTQ Orbitrap XL MS-based metabolomics approach. Our results indicated that DHP alleviated early steatosis and inflammation in liver histology and the metabolomic analysis of serum and hepatic tissue revealed that first, ethanol treatment mainly altered phosphatidylcholines (PCs) including PC (13:0) and phosphocholine, arachidonic acid metabolites including 20-ethyl PGF2α and amino acids including l-Proline; Second, DHP supplementation ameliorated the altered metabolic levels particularly involved in phosphocholine and l-Proline. These data suggested that DHP might restore the perturbed metabolism pathways by ethanol exposure to prevent the progression of alcoholic liver injury.