Metabolic changes in rat lung after acute paraquat poisoning by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Paraquat is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world and is highly toxic to humans and animals. Respiratory failure as a result of lung injury is the most common cause of death from paraquat. In this study, we developed a lung metabolomic method by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to evaluate the effect of acute paraquat poisoning on rats. The acute paraquat poisoning group rats were given 36 mg/kg of paraquat by intragastric administration. Pattern recognition analysis, including both principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA) revealed that acute paraquat poisoning induced metabolic perturbations. Compared to the control group, the level of (Z,Z)-9,12-octadecadienoic acid, arachidonic acid, 11-transoctadecenoic acid in lung of acute paraquat poisoning group increased, while the level of butanedioic acid, phthalic acid, d-galactose decreased. The results indicate that metabolomic methods by GC-MS may be useful to elucidate acute paraquat poisoning through the exploration of biomarkers. According to the pathological changes of lung, there was obviously destroyed and collapsed alveolar structure in acute paraquat poisoning group.