A Metabolomic Study to Identify Potential Tissue Biomarkers for Indomethacin-Induced Gastric Ulcer in Rats

Background: Gastric Ulcer (GU) is the most prevalent gastrointestinal disorder induced by various factors and Non-Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) as one of the most common reasons. Due to the absence of appropriate molecular markers for GU, the aim of this study was to utilize a metabolomics approach in order to find potential metabolite markers for the disease. Methods: Stomach tissue samples from indomethacin-treated rats and normal controls were used to perform a 1H-NMR metabolomics study. The altered metabolites were identified using random forest multivariate analysis. Results: ROC curves showed that the random forest model had a good predictive performance with AUC of 1 for the test and 0.708 for the training sets. Seventeen differentially expressed metabolites were found between GU and normal tissue sample. These metabolites included trimethylamine, betaine, carnitine, methionine, acetylcho line, choline, N,N-Dimethylglycine, cis-aconitate, tryptophan, spermidine, acetylcarnitine, creatinine, pantothenate, taurine, isoleucine, glucose and kynurenine. Conclusion: The results of the study demonstrated that metabolomics approach could serve as a viable method to find potential markers for GU. Surely, further studies are needed for the validation of the results.