Alterations in the serum bile acid metabolome associated with ursodiol administration in conventional mice.

(A) NMDS ordination illustrates dissimilarity indices via Horn distances between bile acid profiles of serum samples. (B) Targeted bile acid metabolomics of murine serum was performed by UPLC-MS/MS and identified 38 distinct bile acids. (C) Variable-importance plot of the top 15 bile acids identified by Random Forest analysis. Bile acid points are color-coded for relative concentrations of each bile acid within the ursodiol 450 treatment group (red if their concentration is high in ursodiol 450 treatment, gray if they were intermediate, and light blue if the concentrations were low). Each bile acid name is colored coded based on bile acid type (purple indicates glycine conjugated, orange indicates taurine conjugated, teal indicates primary unconjugated, blue indicates secondary unconjugated, and gray indicates other type of bile acid). (D) Box and whisker plots of bile acids that were significantly altered in ursodiol treated mice compared to pretreatment in any of the sample types evaluated (based on a Two-way ANOVA with Dunnett’s multiple comparisons post hoc test). Data represents two independent experiments (pretreatment, n = 4; ursodiol 50, n = 3; ursodiol 150, n = 4; ursodiol 450, n = 6). (ZIP)