OBJECTIVE

To elucidate the anti-inflammatory mechanism of Reduning Injection (RDN) by analyzing the potential biomarkers and metabolic pathways of the carrageenan-induced inflammatory model from the overall metabolic level.

METHODS

Rat inflammatory model was established by carrageenan. UPLC-Q-TOF/MS was used to detect and analyze changes of endogenous metabolites in the serum and urine of carrageenan-induced inflammatory rats. Combined with multivariate analysis and databases analysis, inflammatory-related potential biomarkers were screened and identified to analyze possible metabolic pathways. The reliability and biological significance of these biomarkers was verified by metabolic network analysis and correlation analysis with pharmacodynamic indicators.

RESULTS

A total of 16 potential biomarkers were screened and identified by multivariate analysis and metabolite databases, among which 13 species could be adjusted by RDN. The metabolism pathway analysis revealed that histidine metabolism, sphingolipid metabolism, and tyrosine metabolism were greatly disturbed. Their biomarkers involved urocanic acid, sphingosine, and norepinephrine, all of which showed a callback trend after RDN treatment. The three biomarkers had a certain correlation with some known inflammatory-related small molecules (histamine, arachidonic acid, Leukotriene B4, and PGE) and pharmacodynamic indicators (IL-6, IL-1β, PGE and TNF-α), which indicated that the selected biomarkers had certain reliability and biological significance.

CONCLUSION

RDN has a good regulation of the metabolic disorder of endogenous components in carrageenan-induced inflammatory rats. And its anti-inflammatory mechanism is mainly related to the regulation of amino acid and lipid metabolism. This research method is conducive to the interpretation of the overall pharmacological mechanism of Chinese medicine.