Abstract
Backgrounds
Paraquat is toxic to humans and there is no antidote for paraquat poisoning. Moreover, the mechanisms of paraquat toxicity have not been clearly defined.
Methods
In this study, we developed a serum metabolomic method using gas chromatography- mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to evaluate the effects of paraquat poisoning on mice. Pattern recognition analysis, including both principal component analysis and cross orthogonal partial least squares-discriminate analysis revealed that paraquat poisoning induced energy/redox cycle and metabolic perturbations.
Results
Compared with the control group, the levels of creatinine, citric acid, succinic acid, fumaric acid and glycine in the sub acute paraquat poisoning group increased (P < 0.05), while the levels of alpha-Tocopherol, 6-phosphogluconic acid and palmitoleic acid decreased (P < 0.05).
Conclusion
These findings provide an overview of systematic responses to paraquat exposure and metabolomic insight into the toxicological mechanism of paraquat. Our results demonstrate that the metabolomic method based on GC-MS can be a useful tool to elucidate the mechanism of PQ toxicity, and provide a new direction for its clinical diagnosis and treatment.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.81601644, 81671864.
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Lina Gao, Guang Wang, Huiya Yuan, Enyu Xu, Guojie Liu & Junting Liu declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Human and animal rights
All experimental procedures about animal treatment and sample collection were conducted according to the Institutional Animal Care Guidelines and were approved as ethical by the Administration Committee of Experimental Animals at the Laboratory Animal Center of China Medical University.
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Gao, L., Wang, G., Yuan, H. et al. Serum metabolomics in mice after paraquat posioning. Mol. Cell. Toxicol. 15, 453–458 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13273-019-0049-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13273-019-0049-1