Journal of Bioequivalence & Bioavailability

Abstract

Urinary Study on the Biochemical Effect of Acupuncture on Monosodium Urate Crystals-Induced Acute Gouty Arthritis in Rats using 600MHz 1H NMR

Yu Chen, Li-Ping Wu, Yu-Jie Liu, Peng-Chi Deng, Hai-Lin Yin, Si-Lan Wen, Cong Chen and Li-Ming Ye

Acupuncture may potentially be an alternative therapy for acute gouty arthritis, a common inflammation model with multiple pathogenic mechanisms. In order to investigate the biological process of acute gouty arthritis and the effect of acupuncture, 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabonomics has been applied to acquire urine metabolom data. Acute gouty arthritis model rats were induced by monosodium urate (MSU) crystals. The acupuncture on ST-36 (Zusanli) and SP-6 (Sanyinjiao) acupoints was applied for nine consecutive days. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS) have been used to compare the time course urine metabolic perturbations. The prominent changes in endogenous urinary metabolites in acute gouty arthritis rats comprised increased levels of citrate and succinate, and decrease of allantoin, lactate, formate, trimethyl-N-oxide (TMAO) and taurine on the 3rd day after MSU injection; and on day 9, Citrate, succinate, and allantoin began to recover to the original level, whereas formate, taurine, TMAO and lactate further decreased, which showed their incompletely recovery. Acupuncture treatment appears to reverse the levels of most metabolites affected by acute gouty arthritis, however, with significant increase levels of acetate, acetoacetate, allantoin, creatine/creatinine, phenylacetylglycine (PAG), taurine and TMAO on day 3; all these metabolites began to recover to the original level on day 9 except for creatine/creatinine, which slightly increased, demonstrating the therapeutic effects of acupuncture on acute gouty arthritis. Our work shows the potential of an NMR-based metabonomic approach in the study of biological effects of acupuncture on acute gouty arthritis.