Hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S) is the second leading cause of toxinrelated deaths in the operational site. Its main target organs of toxic effects are the central nervous system and respiratory system. In this study, we developed a serum metabonomic method, based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS), to evaluate the effect of acute poisoning by hydrogen sulfide on rats. Pattern recognition analysis, including both principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA), revealed that acute hydrogen sulfide poisoning induced metabolic perturbations. Compared to the control group, the level of urea, glucose, glyceryl stearate in rat serum of the poisoning group increased after two hours, and the level of glucose, docosahexaenoic acid, glyceryl stearate and arachidonic acid in rat serum of the poisoning group increased after 48 h, while the L-valine, galactose, L-tyrosine levels decreased. Our results indicate that metabonomic methods based on GC/MS may be useful to elucidate acute hydrogen sulfide poisoning through the exploration of biomarkers.
Key words metabolomics; GC/MS; acute hydrogen sulfide poisoningHydrogen sulfide is a colorless, flammable, and extremely hazardous gas that naturally occurs in hot springs, crude petroleum, and natural gas. The bacterial decomposition of organic materials and human or animal waste also generates hydrogen sulfide.Forensic toxicology has shown that hydrogen sulfide is one of the most toxic gases.1) It has been reported that if 500 ppm of hydrogen sulfide is in the air, inhalation will rapidly lead to severe poisoning, and that 900 ppm of hydrogen sulfide in the air will cause fatality immediately.2) Accidents have been reported in chemical processing plants, 3,4) in sewage disposal facilities, 5) and after the ingestion of sulfur products.6) It is difficult to quantify original hydrogen sulfide levels, because the gas produced in these situations is unstable and rapidly metabolized as thiosulfate and sulfate through hepatic oxidation.7) Toxicological analyses of sulfide and thiosulfate, a metabolite of sulfide, in blood and urine of the victims were made after fatal hydrogen sulfide poisoning in the forensic case, using the extractive alkylation technique combined with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. 8,9) In our previous study, "Cocktail" probe drugs approach is used to evaluate the induction or inhibition effects of chronic hydrogen sulfide poisoning on the activities of rats cytochrome P450 isoforms such as CYP1A2, CYP2C9, CYP2B6 and CYP2D6, as a result chronic hydrogen sulfide poisoning could induce the activity of CYP1A2 and CYP2B6 in rats.
10)"Metabonomics" has been defined as "the quantitative measurement of the time-related, multi-parametric metabolic response of living systems to pathophysiological stimuli or genetic modification." 11) Metabolomics is a scientific study that aims to identify and quantify the levels of all metabolites; it has been applied widely in many areas, such as medicine, biology, and food science.1...