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UPLC-Q-Exactive/MS-based metabonomics revealed protective effect of Citri Sarcodactylis and its product on gastrointestinal motility disorders.

Weilin Chen,Yicheng Chen,Lishan Chen,Jia Cai,Yue Sun,Ming Li,Shumei Wang,Menghua Wu,Xingyang Xue,Jiang Meng

Published 2025 in Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis

ABSTRACT

Citri Sarcodactylis Fructus (CSF) is widely used as folk medicine in traditional Chinese medicine. Owing to its inherent dryness, CSF is commonly subjected to steam processing during clinical application. Steam-processed CSF(SCSF) can alleviate dryness symptoms of CSF and enhance therapeutic efficacy for gastrointestinal motility disorders. However, its steaming processing mechanism of reducing dryness and increasing efficacy remains unverified in recent years. The aim of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effects and potential mechanism of action of CSF and SCSF on GMD, while further elucidating the underlying processing mechanism. Initially, GMD model was induced by administering an L-Arginine solution to SD rats. The therapeutic effects of CSF and SCSF were evaluated by pathologic observation and measurement of concentrations of relevant gastrointestinal hormones. Additionally, the dryness property was characterized by measuring aquaporin expression by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Subsequently, serum and feces metabolomics were conducted to elucidate the differential mechanisms underlying the intervention of CSF/SCSF in GMD. Finally, a comparative analysis between CSF and SCSF acting mechanisms was performed to explain the processing mechanism for enhancing efficiency while reducing dryness. CSF and SCSF can promote intestinal peristalsis, improve gastric injury and gastrointestinal hormone disorders; notably, SCSF exhibits better therapeutic efficacy than CSF. In addition, CSF has a strong dryness, and dryness decreased after steaming. Metabolomics analysis revealed that CSF mainly affected tryptophan metabolism by adjusting the content of pharmacodynamic markers L-tryptophan to improve gastrointestinal motility disorders. SCSF mainly affected lysine degradation by adjusting the content of pharmacodynamic markers lysine to improve gastrointestinal peristalsis. Furthermore, SCSF may reduce energy metabolism by avoiding the effects of glycine, serine and threonine metabolism and phenylalanine metabolism, and then to relieve the dryness. Both CSF and SCSF can improve gastrointestinal peristalsis in GMD rats, but SCSF has a stronger improvement effect on GMD, and SCSF could reduce dryness. Although their mechanisms of action are all related to regulating gastrointestinal hormone secretion, and improving multiple metabolic pathways, the specific metabolic pathways they regulate are different. These findings elucidated the underlying processing mechanism and lay a foundation for the clinical practice for CSF/SCSF.

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