A HILIC-UHPLC–MS/MS untargeted urinary metabonomics combined with quantitative analysis of five polar biomarkers on osteoporosis rats after oral administration of Gushudan

Abstract A HILIC-UHPLC–MS/MS untargeted urinary metabonomic method combined with quantitative analysis of five potential polar biomarkers in rat urine was developed and validated, to further understand the anti-osteoporosis effect of Gushudan(GSD) and its mechanism on prednisolone-induced osteoporosis(OP) rats in this study. The metabolites were separated and identified on Waters BEH HILIC (2.1 mm × 100 mm, 1.7 μm) column using the Waters ACQUITY™ ultra performance liquid chromatography system (Waters Corporation, Milford, USA) coupled with a Micromass Quattro Micro™ API mass spectrometer (Waters Corp, Milford, MA, USA). Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to identify potential biomarkers. Primary potential polar biomarkers including creatinine, taurine, betaine, hypoxanthine and cytosine, which were related to energy metabolism, lipid metabolism and amino acid metabolism, were found in the untargeted metabonomic research. Moreover, these targeted biomarkers were further separated and quantified in multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) with positive ionization mode, using tinidazole as internal standard (I.S.). Good linearities (r > 0.99) were obtained for all the analytes with the low limit of quantification from 1.00 to 12.8 μg/mL. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of the intra-day and inter-day precisions were within 15.0% and the accuracy ranged from −14.3% to 13.5%. The recovery was more than 85.0%. And the validated method was successfully applied to investigate the urine samples of the control group, prednisolone-induced osteoporosis model group and Gushudan-treatment group in rats. Compared to the control group, the level of creatinine, taurine, betaine, hypoxanthine and cytosine in the model group revealed a significant decrease trend (p  t -test. This paper provided a better understanding of the therapeutic effect and mechanism of GSD on prednisolone-induced osteoporosis rats.