Protective effect of propofol on ischemia-reperfusion injury detected by HPLC-MS/MS targeted metabolic profiling

To investigate the mechanism underling the protective effect of propofol. A metabolomic analysis was performed in this study using ultra performance liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC/Q-TOF- MS) to compare the metabolism during the process of H/R in the presence or absence of P-PostH. A total of 22 metabolites were detected varied after propofol posthypoxia treatment. Pathway analysis revealed these metabolites were mainly involved in the purine metabolic pathway, three carboxylic acid metabolic pathways, alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism pathway and lipid metabolism pathway. We measured the level of Hypoxanthine to verify the metabolomics work, for pathway analysis, we detect the level of reactive oxygen species with H/R and P-PostH treatment. Our study achieved a global comparison of metabolism profiling of H/R cell model with or without propofol posthypoxic treatment. The result indicated that propofol can attenuate endothelial injury caused by IRI by reducing oxidative damage.