Evaluations of the effect of HuangQi against heart failure based on comprehensive echocardiography index and metabonomics

HuangQi (HQ) is a major medicinal herb commonly used as an ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formulas. It has been proved to be effective against heart failure (HF). However, its holistic therapeutic mechanism is not yet well explored.The present study was designed to investigate the inhibitory effects and action mechanism of HQ in adriamycin (ADR)-induced HF rats.An integrative approach combining comprehensive echocardiography index (CEI) and metabonomics was conducted to assess the integral efficacy of HQ against HF. CEI was constructed to comprehensively evaluate the protection of HQ through principal component analysis of eight echocardiography parameters. Meanwhile, NMR-based untargeted metabolomic studies were performed to investigate the regulative effects of HQ coupled with correlation analysis.HQ showed significant regulatory effects on four echocardiography parameters (left ventricular diastolic diameter, left ventricular systolic wall thickness, ejection fraction and fractional shortening). The effect on comprehensive CEI also demonstrated the efficacy of HQ against HF, especially on the first principal component (PC1). HQ could exert marked metabolic regulations on five key metabolites related to HF (NAG, 3-hydroxybutyrate, glutamine, succinate and acetoacetate), which were mainly involved into alterations of energy metabolism, oxidative stress, hypertrophy, as well as inflammatory. Their correlation analysis revealed the relationship between the metabolic profiles and cardiac function, which further authenticated the systemic regulation of HQ against HF.Current evidences revealed that HQ was effective in control of HF from cardiac dysfunction and metabolic alterations. This study provided a useful approach for evaluating the efficacy of TCMs against HF.