Kidney Tissue Targeted Metabolic Profiling of Unilateral Ureteral Obstruction Rats by NMR

Renal interstitial fibrosis is a common pathological process in the progression of kidney disease. A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) based metabolomics approach was used to analyze the kidney tissues of renal interstitial fibrosis (RIF) rats, induced by unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO). The combination of a variety of statistical methods was used to screen out 14 significantly changed potential metabolites related with multiple biochemical processes including amino acid metabolism, adenine metabolism, energy metabolism, osmolyte change and induced oxidative stress. The exploration of the contralateral kidneys enhanced the understanding of the disease, which was also supported by serum biochemistry and kidney histopathology results. In addition, the pathological parameters (clinical chemistry, histological and immunohistochemistry results) were correlated with the significantly changed differential metabolites related with RIF. This study shows that target tissue metabolomics analysis can be used as a useful tool to understand the mechanism of the disease and provide a novel insight in the pathogenesis of RIF.