Metabolomics and pathways analyses in traumatic brain injury animal model

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), a progressive neurological disease caused by physical injury to the brain tissue, impacting its functions.This study employed metabolomics based on untargeted mass spectrometry method to examine plasma specimens from well-established mouse models with induced TBI (n = 6) and control mice (n = 6).The objective was to assess the metabolomics profile and the associated biochemical pathways in TBI.There was a noticeable segregation between TBI and reference groups (Q2 = 0.342, R2 = 0.993), according to orthogonal partial least square-discriminant analysis, indicating significant difference in metabolic expression.Moreover, 102 metabolites were significantly altered in TBI mice; 59 were upregulated, while 43 were downregulated in TBI mice.Correspondingly, the TBI model showed a significant dysregulation in number of key metabolic pathways, including metabolism of glycerophospholipids, linoleic acid, glycine, serine, threonine, pyrimidine, tryptophan, nicotinate and nicotinamide.Additionally, isoleucyl-asparagine, 2-deoxyinosine triphosphate, diglycosyl diacylglycerols (25:0/26/2), and phosphatidylethanolamine (24:0/22:4) demonstrated excellent performance for TBI detection with an area under the curve 0.8.This study identified putative plasma biomarkers of TBI and highlighted the dysregulated biochemical pathways, providing valuable clinical insights into TBI research.