Asian Journal
Of Traditional Medicines

Abstract: This paper was designed to investigate metabonomic characteristics of the hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity induced by
Euphorbiae Pekinensis Radix (EPR), a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine which has been used for the treatment
of edema, scrofula and antivirus. Metabonomic method was used for chronic toxicology study of EPR in rats. With a clinical
dose, the rats of the model group were intragastricly administrated with the EPR extract for 10 weeks continuously. The serum
samples of the model group and the healthy control group were collected at several time points and the endogenous metabolites
were analyzed by UHPLC-MS/MS. Using the principal components analysis (PCA), the levels of thirteen endogenous metabolites
were found to be significantly changed in serum from the model group. Metabonomics method could distinguish the model
group from the healthy control group in 2nd, 6th and 10th week before the visible organic injuries of liver and kidney found in 10th
week by histopathology approach. The present study proves the potential of UHPLC-MS/MS based metabonomics in mapping
metabolic response for toxicology research.

Key words: Euphorbiae Pekinensis Radix, hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, metabonomics, UHPLC-MS/MS