Blood metabolic fingerprinting of rats, subjected to subchronic lead exposure

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Environmental pollution with heavy metals is vital issue in the present time. Lead, as one of the environmental contaminators, deserves attention due to its applicability in human activity and its xenobiotic character. METHODS In this study we used an untargeted metabolomic approach -the metabolomic fingerprinting method. Lead acetate was intraperitoneally injected to rats within the framework of a subchronical experiment and blood samples were analyzed by UHPLC-MS. Metabolite expression was qualitatively compared between treated and control groups. For substances with a significant content difference, tandem CID spectra for structure elucidation were obtained using an exact mass search by generating a list of potential formulas, by a characteristic fragments database search, using in silico mass spectra prediction, and by looking for a specific fragmentation rearrangement. RESULTS Untargeted metabolomic analysis shows 37 metabolites with significant changes in expression in comparing the control and exposure group. Annotation