Study on serum metabonomics of rats exposed to low-dose ionizing radiation, carbon monoxide, benzene and noise

Objective　To investigate the combined effects of low-dose ionizing radiation, carbon monoxide, benzene and noise on serum metabolites and the mechanism of injury induced by these complex environmental factors in rats. Methods 　Sixteen adult SD rats were randomly divided into control group and exposed group (8 each). The exposed group received the combined effect every day for 7 days. At the end of experiment, sera were collected from the abdominal aorta of rats. The metabolic fingerprint of serum was obtained by 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopy and determined with pattern recognition techniques of principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal signal correction-partial least squares (OSC-PLS). The similarities and differences in metabolic profiles between two groups were visualized by SIMCA-P software. Results　The rat serum 1H NMR spectra revealed different metabolic spectra between the control group and exposed group. The OSC-PLS plots of the serum samples presented respectively marked clustering between the two groups. Compared with the control group, the contents of lipid, high density lipoprotein, glycine/glucose, N-acetyl glycoprotein 1, N-acetyl glycoprotein 2, phosphatidyl choline and unsaturated fatty acid increased, while those of lactic acid, threonine/lipid, alanine, creatine, glycerylphosphorylcholine/ trimethylamine oxide, low density lipoprotein/high density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, very low density lipoprotein/ low density lipoprotein, very low density lipoprotein and saturated fatty acid decreased. Conclusions　Combination of low-dose ionizing radiation, carbon monoxide, benzene and noise could induce changes of serum metabolites in rats, involving in immune function, renal function and energy metabolism. The NMR-based-metabonomics method has potential of application in research on combined biological effects of the complex environmental factors. DOI: 10.11855/j.issn.0577-7402.2015.07.09