The Evaluation of Toxicity Induced by Psoraleae Fructus in Rats Using Untargeted Metabonomic Method Based on UPLC-Q-TOF/MS

Psoraleae Fructus is the dry and mature fruit of leguminous plant Psoralea corylifolia L., with the activity of warming kidney and enhancing yang, warming spleen, and other effects. However, large doses can cause liver and kidney toxicity. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the toxicity of Psoraleae Fructus systematically. Although traditional biochemical indicators and pathological tests have been used to evaluate the safety of drug, these methods lack sensitivity and specificity, so a fast and sensitive analytical method is urgently needed. In this study, an ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF/MS) method was used to analyze the metabolic profiles of rat plasma. The changes of metabolites in plasma samples were detected by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Compared with the control group, after 7 days of administration, the pathological sections showed liver and kidney toxicity, and the metabolic trend was changed. Finally, 13 potential biomarkers related to the toxicity of Psoraleae Fructus were screened. The metabolic pathways involved were glycerol phospholipids metabolism, amino acid metabolism, energy metabolism, and so forth. The discovery of these biomarkers laid a foundation for better explaining the hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity of Psoraleae Fructus and provided a guarantee for its safety evaluation.