Transcription profiling of mouse liver after Acetaminophen intoxication

Acetaminophen (APAP) is the most widely used analgesic in the United States. Its acute overdose causes liver damage by inducing localized centrilobular cell death. Because of widespread use, APAP toxicity has become the most frequent cause of acute liver failure. Many factors have been associated with the susceptibility of APAP-induced liver injuries, however, few of them have been confirmed and used in the clinical setting. We tried to identify the subset of factors that could affect susceptibility to APAP-induced liver injury by an integrative genetic, transcriptional and 2-D-NMR-based metabolomic analysis across a panel of inbred mouse strains. Experiment Overall Design: After a single administration of high dose (300 mg/kg i.p.) APAP, liver and blood samples were extracted from 3 sensitive (C57B6, DBA/2, and SmJ) and 1 resistant (SJL) mice strains at 0, 3 and 6 hour after APAP exposure. Endogenous metabolites from liver samples were analyzed by 1H-13C 2-dimensional-NMR and gene expression changes occurring within these liver samples were simultaneously analyzed using Affymetrix microarrays. The transcriptional and metabolomic data was jointly analyzed, and functional information within the Gene Ontology database was used to identify the subset of genes that could affect susceptibility to APAP-induced liver injury in the early phase response.