Metabonomic study of biochemical changes in the rat urine induced by Pinellia ternata (Thunb.) Berit.

We adopted an ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-fight mass spectrometry (UPLC Q-TOF/MS) metabonomics approach to study metabonomic features of rats induced by orally administered Pinellia ternata (Thunb.) Berit. (BX). The integrated urinary MS data were analyzed via principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) to identify the differential metabolites. Ten potential biomarkers were identified within complex sample matrix of urine. The identified biomarkers indicated the perturbations of tryptophan, phenylacetylglycine and pantothenic acid metabolism in BX-induced rats. The biomarkers that were found to be changed with the passage of time were explained tentatively based on previous study.