Metabolic Profiling Study of Yang Deficiency Syndrome in Hepatocellular Carcinoma byH1NMR and Pattern Recognition

Xueqiang Huang,Changquan Ling,Weixing Dai,Qunwei Chen,Juan Du,Shikai Yan,Qingbo Lang,Genjin Yang,Weidong Zhang

doi:10.1155/2012/843048

Abstract

This study proposes a 1H NMR-based metabonomic approach to explore the biochemical characteristics of Yang deficiency syndrome in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) based on serum metabolic profiling. Serum samples from 21 cases of Yang deficiency syndrome HCC patients (YDS-HCC) and 21 cases of non-Yang deficiency syndrome HCC patients (NYDS-HCC) were analyzed using 1H NMR spectroscopy and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was applied to visualize the variation patterns in metabolic profiling of sera from different groups. The differential metabolites were identified and the biochemical characteristics were analyzed. We found that the intensities of six metabolites (LDL/VLDL, isoleucine, lactate, lipids, choline, and glucose/sugars) in serum of Yang deficiency syndrome patients were lower than those of non-Yang deficiency syndrome patients. It implies that multiple metabolisms, mainly including lipid, amino acid, and energy metabolisms, are unbalanced or weakened in Yang deficiency syndrome patients with HCC. The decreased intensities of metabolites including LDL/VLDL, isoleucine, lactate, lipids, choline, and glucose/sugars in serum may be the distinctive metabolic variations of Yang deficiency syndrome patients with HCC. And these metabolites may be potential biomarkers for diagnosis of Yang deficiency syndrome in HCC.

Highlights

IntroductionChinese medicinal herbs have been widely used for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in China and some clinical trials have been done to investigate their effects [1, 2]
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a serious health problem worldwide
As shown in partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) scores plot (Figure 2(a)), samples from different groups were well separated along the first PLS component, which indicates that NMR-based metabolic profiling could reveal characteristic pathological alterations in serum from YDSHCC and NYDS-hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients

Summary

Introduction

Chinese medicinal herbs have been widely used for treatment of HCC in China and some clinical trials have been done to investigate their effects [1, 2]. All these treatments were based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) diagnostics, and syndrome differentiation was the key. As known that TCM diagnostics is often based on observation of human symptoms rather than “microlevel” laboratory tests, TCM diagnostics often lacks standard and objective diagnostic methods for HCC in TCM practice. Many works have been done on diagnostic standards for TCM syndromes of HCC [3]. To our knowledge, no work has been done to explore the internal characteristics of TCM syndromes in HCC with a holistic view which is the basic nature of TCM theory

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion