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Differences in Intestinal Metabolism of Ginseng Between Normal and Immunosuppressed Rats

  • Original Research Article
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European Journal of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Background and Objective

Ginseng is usually consumed as a dietary supplement for health care in the normal state or prescribed as a herbal medicine in pathologic conditions. Although metabolic studies of ginseng are commonly performed on healthy organisms, the metabolic characteristics in pathologic organisms remain unexplored. This study aimed to uncover the difference in intestinal metabolism of ginseng between normal and cyclophosphamide-induced immunosuppressed rats and further discuss the potential mechanisms involved.

Methods

Twelve Sprague-Dawley rats (6–8 weeks old) were randomly divided into two groups: the normal group (NG) and immunosuppressed group (ISG). Rats in the NG and ISG groups were intraperitoneally administered normal saline and cyclophosphamide injections (40 mg/kg) on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 10th days; on the 12th day, all rats were intragastrically administered ginseng water extract (900 mg/kg). The difference in intestinal metabolism of ginseng was compared using an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadruple time-of-flight mass spectrometry-based metabolomics approach, and the diversities of gut microbiota were analyzed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing between the two groups.

Results

The intestinal metabolomic characteristics of ginseng were significantly different between the normal and immunosuppressed rats, with the ginsenoside F2 (F2), 20S-ginsenoside Rg3 (20(S)-Rg3), pseudo-ginsenoside Rt5 (Pseudo-Rt5), ginsenoside Rd (Rd), ginsenoside Rh1 (Rh1), 20S-ginsenoside Rg1 (20(S)-Rg1), ginsenoside compound K (CK), ginsenoside Rg2 (Rg2) and 20S-panaxatriol (S-PPT) more abundant in immunosuppressed ones (P < 0.05). Additionally, the composition of gut microbiota was remarkably altered in the two groups, with some specific bacterial communities such as Bacteroides spp., Eubacterium spp. and Lachnospiraceae_UCG-010 spp. increased and Bifidobacterium spp. decreased in immunosuppressed rats compared with normal ones.

Conclusion

The intestinal metabolism of ginseng in immunosuppressed rats was significantly different from that in normal ones, which might be partly attributed to the changes in the intensity of specific gut bacteria. The outcomes of this study could provide scientific data for rationalization of ginseng use as both a dietary supplement and herbal medicine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, Affiliated Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, 210028, People’s Republic of China

    Jin-Hao Zhu, Jin-Di Xu, Xiao-Ya Zhang & Song-Lin Li

  2. Department of Metabolomics, Jiangsu Province Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Jiangsu Branch of China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Nanjing, 210028, People’s Republic of China

    Jin-Hao Zhu, Shan-Shan Zhou, Jing Zhou, Ming Kong, Qian Mao, He Zhu & Song-Lin Li

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  1. Jin-Hao Zhu
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  2. Jin-Di Xu
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Correspondence to He Zhu or Song-Lin Li.

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Funding

This study was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFC1711000), National Natural Science Foundation of China (81873094 and 81503365), Independent Research Projects of Jiangsu Province Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (BM2018024-2019001 and BM2018024-2019009) and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (BK20191504).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics approval

This study was approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of Jiangsu Province Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, PR China.

Author contributions

JHZ designed the study, performed the experiment, analyzed the results and drafted the manuscript; JDX, SSZ, XYZ, JZ, MK and QM performed the experiment partly; HZ and SLL acquired the funds, designed the study, analyzed the results and revised the manuscript.

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Zhu, JH., Xu, JD., Zhou, SS. et al. Differences in Intestinal Metabolism of Ginseng Between Normal and Immunosuppressed Rats. Eur J Drug Metab Pharmacokinet 46, 93–104 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13318-020-00645-1

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