RESUMO
Aim To establish the rat model of Spleen-Qi deficiency, analyse the metabolic pathways and investigate the connection between the changed urinary metabolites and Spleen-Qi deficiency, in order to explore the potential mechanisms of Spleen-Qi deficiency.Methods With the binding methods of diarrhea induced by bitter and cold, abnormal of starvation and excessive tiredness, the rat Spleen-Qi deficiency model was established.Then the activity of creatine phosphokinase(CPK) was detected.The endogenous metabolites in the urine were detected by NMR, and the data were analyzed with multivariate and statistical methods.Then the metabolites were selected that could be clearly distinct in the two groups with the fold change value(>1.2) and the P<0.05 of Student′s t-test.Both the pathway analysis and enrichment analysis were performed with Metabo Analyst 3.0.Results Compared with the normal rats, the activity of CPK decreased significantly in model rats(P<0.05).A significant separation appeared in the principal components analysis(PCA) score plot when the control group and the model group were compared, indicating that the Spleen-Qi deficiency model was successfully duplicated.The 33 differential metabolites, which mainly involved in the metabolic pathways, were distinguished from the comparision of Spleen-Qi deficiency model group and control group.The metabolic pathways was related to energy metabolism, amino acid metabolism, nucleotide metabolism and disturbance of gut microbes.Conclusions The main energy metabolic pathways (tricarboxylic acid cycle, glycolysis and liquid oxidation) may be disturbed in Spleen-Qi deficiency rats.The energy supply function is suppressed, which leads to the fatigue and weight loss in rats.