Identifications of metabolic differences between Hedysari Radix Praeparata Cum Melle and Astragali Radix Praeparata Cum Melle for spleen-qi deficiency rats: A comparative study

Hedysari Radix Praeparata Cum Melle (HRPCM) and Astragali Radix Praeparata Cum Melle (ARPCM) are capable of improving spleen-qi deficiency (SQD) syndrome especially in the gastrointestinal dysfunction and decreased immunity in traditional Chinese medicine clinically. This study aims to compare and reveal the metabolic differences between HRPCM and ARPCM for SQD rats. Firstly, HRPCM (12.6 g/kg) and ARPCM (12.6 g/kg) were used to intervene SQD rats to further evaluate the effect. The results showed that HRPCM and ARPCM were able to improve the spleen pathology, increase the body weight, the rectal temperature, the spleen index, the thymus index, the levels of GAS and D-xylose in serum, and decrease the levels of IL-2, IL-6 and TNF-α in serum for SQD rats. Then, the studies of metabolic differences in serum and spleen were carried out using UPLC-Q-TOF-MS. The findings emphasized that HRPCM and ARPCM not only regulated metabolic profiling of serum and spleen in SQD rats, but also existed differences. HRPCM and ARPCM regulated metabolic pathways mainly including lipid metabolism, energy metabolism, amino acid metabolism, nucleotide metabolism, sugar metabolism and other types of metabolism for SQD rats. However, the metabolite profiles in SQD rats changed significantly, mainly involving abnormal glycine synthesis occurred in SQD rats. The expression trends of metabolites in HRPCM and ARPCM intervention for SQD rats were partly the same. Interestingly, there are similarities and differences in metabolic profiling between HRPCM and ARPCM for SQD rats. The differences were mainly in the synthesis of L-glutamine in amino acid metabolism.