LC-MS based plasma metabolomics study of the intervention effect of different polar parts of Hawthorn on gastrointestinal motility disorder rats.

Dyspepsia, one of the most prevalent diseases of the digestive tract that impacts the quality of patient life, is mainly caused by gastrointestinal motility disorder. Hawthorn is a commonly-used traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for treating dyspepsia, has been proven to improve gastrointestinal motility. Herein, a rat model of gastrointestinal motility disorder was established by subcutaneous injecting with atropine. The modeled rats were treated with 4 polar parts (T1-4 in descending polarity, corresponding to water, n-butanol, ethyl acetate and petroleum ether extracts, respectively) of hawthorn. Through metabolomics analysis, a total of 20 significantly metabolites were identified with significant changes in their abundance levels and these metabolites were related to many metabolic pathways such as amino acid metabolism and primary bile acid biosynthesis. The results showed that T3 had the best therapeutic effect of promoting gastrointestinal motility, other parts with no obvious therapeutic effect, demonstrating that the effective components of hawthorn may be compounds of medium polarity. T3 might achieve good therapeutic effects due to the gastrointestinal motility promotion activity, and by rectifying the disturbed metabolic pathways in gastrointestinal motility disorder model.