A Metabolic Profiling Analysis Of Degenerative Intervertebral Disk Of Rabbit By Using GC/TOF-MS

Objective: To establish intervertebral disk metabonomics analysis method based on gas chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry(GC/TOF-MS), to compare the differences between the degenerative and normal intervertebral disk of rabbit in metabolic profile and determine the molecular mechanism occurring in disc degeneration and potential clinical value of characteristic metabolites which is obtained by filtering for intervertebral disc degeneration.Methods: 6 New Zealand white rabbits were made into modeling of degenerative intervertebral disk by puncture method. GC/TOF-MS was used to analyzes the degenerative intervertebral disk of 6 cases in the model group and the normal intervertebral disk of 6 cases in the control group of rabbit. The pattern recognition method and nonparametric test analyzes were used to analyze the data, to screen and identify the significant markers. These significant metabolites and metabolic pathways which are involved in were analyzed.Results: We established the rabbit model of degenerative intervertebral disk and the orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis(OPLS-DA) disease distinguishing model for degenerative intervertebral disk as against normal intervertebral disk of rabbit. 6 characteristic metabolites were selected from the degenerative and normal intervertebral disk of rabbit. We identified those 6 metabolites(lactic acid, alanyl-alanine, glutamic acid, oxoproline, pinitol, glucose-1-phosphate), 4 of them(lactic acid, alanyl-alanine, glutamic acid, oxoproline) in the model group was significantly higher than in the control group, 2 of them(pinitol, glucose-1-phosphate) in the model group was significantly lower than in the control group.Conclusions: Through metabolic profiling of the degenerative and normal intervertebral disk of rabbit, proved that the metabonomics method used to study the intervertebral disc degeneration is feasible. Through the in-depth analysis of characteristic metabolites which is obtained by filtering, a high correlation between metabolism and intervertebral disc degeneration was found. Researches on endogenous metabolites and pathways in intervertebral disc degeneration will provide a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms and provide further directions for clinical treatment.