Bin Xie’s research while affiliated with Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and other places

Total ion chromatogram (TIC): (A) Rat plasma sample in positive ion mode; (B) Rat plasma sample in negative ion mode; (C) Human plasma sample in positive ion mode; (D) Human plasma sample in negative ion mode.

Cervicitis is an exceedingly common gynecological disorder that puts women at high risk of sexually transmitted infections and induces a series of reproductive system diseases. This condition also has a significant impact on quality of life and is commonly misdiagnosed in clinical practice due to its complicated pathogenesis. In the present study, we performed non-targeted plasma metabolomics analysis of cervicitis in both plasma samples obtained from human patients and plasma samples from a phenol mucilage induced rat model of cervicitis, using ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry. In addition to differences in histopathology, we identified differences in the metabolic profile between the cervicitis and control groups using unsupervised principal component analysis and orthogonal projections to latent structures discriminant analysis. These results demonstrated changes in plasma metabolites, with 27 and 22 potential endogenous markers identified in rat and human samples, respectively. The metabolic pathway analysis showed that linoleic acid, arachidonic acid, ether lipid, and glycerophospholipid metabolism are key metabolic pathways involved in cervicitis. This study showed the rat model was successfully created and applied to understand the pathogenesis of cervicitis.

(A) Permutations test plot for OPLS-DA (200 tests) in positive ion mode for rat plasma samples; (B) Permutations test plot for OPLS-DA (200 tests) in negative ion mode for rat plasma samples; (C) Permutations test plot for OPLS-DA (200 tests) in positive ion mode for human plasma samples; (D) Permutations test plot for OPLS-DA (200 tests) in negative ion mode for human plasma samples.

Total ion chromatogram (TIC) of 16 QC sample injections: (A) for positive ion mode; (B) for negative ion mode (P1-P8 represents the 8 peaks in positive ion mode, N1-N8 represents the 8 peaks in negative ion mode).

MS/MS spectrometry of standard and metabolite.

Retention time and intensity of eight typical peaks extracted from 16 QC sample injections.