Urine metabolic changes in rats after tripterygium wilfordii poisoning

Tripterygium wilfordii (Hook. f.) is a woody vine of the Celastraceae family, and native to China (south of the Yangtze River), Korea, and Japan, is used in the clinic for the treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, especially rheumatoid arthritis. In this study, we developed a urine metabolomic method by gas chromatographymass spectrometry (GC-MS) to evaluate the effect of Tripterygium wilfordii poisoning on rats. The Tripterygium wilfordii group rats were given 0.5 and 1.0 g/kg (Low, High) of Tripterygium wilfordii by continous intragastric administration each day for 7 days. Partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA) revealed that Tripterygium wilfordii induced metabolic perturbations. Compared to the control group, increased L-glutamine, arabinitol, L-ornithine, arabinofuranose, xylonic acid, benzoic acid, pentitol, cinnamic acid, galactonic acid of Low group; while increased D-gluconic acid, arabinofuranose, glucaric acid, benzoic acid, galactonic acid of High group. The results indicate that metabolomic method by GC-MS may be useful to elucidate Tripterygium wilfordii poisoning.