Lignans from Schisandra chinensis (Turcz.) Baill (LFS) has been proved to improve impaired cognitive ability thereby show potential in treating Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS and UHPLC-QQQ-MS were adopted cooperatively to establish a method synchronously detecting 10 kinds of LFS monomers in rat plasma samples. And this method was further applied for pharmacokinetic study to compare the metabolism of LFS in normal and AD rats. The results indicated that AD rats showed an observably better absorption of LFS compared to normal rats. Based on time-varying plasma concentration of LFS, metabolomics was used to establish a plasma concentration-time-endogenous metabolite connection. In total 54 time-varying endogenous metabolites were screened and most of which were closely associated with AD. And LFS exerted a concentration dependent regulating effect to most of these metabolites. Through biomarker related pathways and biological function analysis, LFS might treat AD through neuroprotection, antioxidant damage and regulating the metabolism of unsaturated fatty acids. This is the first study connecting LFS absorbtion and endogenous metabolite changes with the time lapse. The pharmacokinetics and metabolic profile differences between normal and AD rats were firstly investigated as well. This study provides a novel perspective in exploring the effect and mechanism of LFS in treating AD.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Lignans; Metabolomics; Pharmacokinetics; Schisandra chinensis (Turcz.) Baill; UHPLC-MS.
Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.