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Published on: July 1, 2021
Potential Biomarkers of Fatal Hypothermia Revealed by UHPLC-MS Metabolomics in Mice
Xin-Zhi Cao1, Zhong-Wen Wu1, Xing-Yu Ma2
1Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Forensic Multi-Omics for Precision Identification, School of Forensic Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China.
Background:
The postmortem diagnosis of fatal hypothermia presents a considerable challenge in forensic medicine. Metabolomics, a powerful tool reflecting comprehensive changes in endogenous metabolites, offers significant potential for exploring disease mechanisms and identifying diagnostic markers.
Methods:
In this study, we employed ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS) to perform a non-targeted metabolomic analysis of liver, stomach, spleen, and musculus gastrocnemius tissues from mice subjected to fatal hypothermia.
Result:
A substantial number of differential metabolites were identified in each tissue: 1601 in the liver, 420 in the stomach, 732 in the spleen, and 668 in the gastrocnemius muscle. The most significantly altered metabolites were as follows: magnoflorine (liver, upregulated, ranked first in fold-change), gibberellic acid (stomach, downregulated, ranked first in fold-change), nitrofurantoin (spleen, upregulated, ranked first in fold-change), and isoreserpin (gastrocnemius muscle, downregulated, ranked first in fold-change). Glycerophospholipid metabolism exhibited notable enrichment in all tissues (spleen: second, liver: tenth, stomach: eleventh, gastrocnemius muscle: twenty-first), as did tryptophan metabolism (spleen: thirteenth, liver: eighth, stomach: third, gastrocnemius muscle: seventeenth).
Conclusions:
Our findings provide insights into the metabolic perturbations associated with fatal hypothermia in different tissues and lay a foundation for the identification of potential tissue biomarkers for forensic diagnosis.
