Beneficial effects of Oridonin on myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury: Insight gained by metabolomic approaches.

Oridonin is a diterpenoid isolated from Rabdosia rubescens (Hemsl.) Hara, a well-known herbal tea in China with many health benefits. To provide a better understanding of the potential cardioprotective effect of Oridonin, we investigated the metabolic alterations in heart tissue and serum of rat subjected to myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury with or without pretreatment of Oridonin by UPLC-MS/MS metabolomics approach. Rats were randomly divided into groups as follows: Control, Sham, MI/R and pretreated with Oridonin (10 mg/kg)+MI/R. After 24 h of reperfusion, heart tissue and serum were collected for biochemical and metabolomic analysis. Pretreatment with Oridonin significantly decreased infarct size and reversed the abnormal elevated myocardial zymogram in serum. Moreover, Oridonin regulated several metabolic pathways, including glycolysis, branched chain amino acid, kynurenine, arginine, glutamine and bile acid metabolism. Our results suggest that Oridonin indeed displays outstanding cardioprotective effect mainly by regulating energy and amino acid metabolism.