Serum Metabolomics in Rats after Acute Paraquat Poisoning

Paraquat is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world and is highly toxic to humans and animals. In this study, we developed a serum metabolomic method based on GC/MS to evaluate the effects of acute paraquat poisoning on rats. Pattern recognition analysis, including both principal component analysis and partial least squares-discriminate analysis revealed that acute paraquat poisoning induced metabolic perturbations. Compared with the control group, the level of octadecanoic acid, L-serine, L-threonine, L-valine, and glycerol in the acute paraquat poisoning group (36 mg/kg) increased, while the levels of hexadecanoic acid, D-galactose, and decanoic acid decreased. These findings provide an overview of systematic responses to paraquat exposure and metabolomic insight into the toxicological mechanism of paraquat. Our results indicate that metabolomic methods based on GC/MS may be useful to elucidate the mechanism of acute paraquat poisoning through the exploration of biomarkers.