Acute blood stasis syndrome was induced in rats by adrenaline hydrochloride and ice water. Ultra performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF/MS) was conducted on plasma metabolites of normal and model rats. Principal component analysis (PCA), differentiation analysis of supervised partial least squares method (PLS-DA), and orthogonal to partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) on metabolomics data for multidimensional statistical analysis were employed, and the resulting biomarkers were screened. Compared to the normal group, there were 46 endogenous metabolites in blood stasis-rat plasma. Of these, 21 metabolites were significantly upregulated, such as acetylcholine, N6,N6,N6-trimethyl-L-lysine, cytosine, and acetylcarnitine, while 25 metabolites were reduced, including indoleacrylic acid, and lysoPC(14:0). These metabolites were mainly related to metabolic pathways, including lipid metabolism, galactose metabolism, linoleic acid metabolism, biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids, glycolysis, and arachidonic acid metabolism. In conclusion, these results indicated that metabolites could be used as important biomarkers for blood stasis syndrome, and could help in revealing the mechanism of blood stasis disease and provide a reference network to determine the disease development stage and appropriate follow-up treatment. Studying altered metabolites in blood stasis model rats can provide insights useful for the diagnosis of blood stasis in the clinic and for the development of drug therapies.
Keywords: blood stasis syndrome; mechanism; metabolites; metabolomics; ultra performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectro-metry (UPLC-Q-TOF/MS).