Metabolomic Fingerprinting in the Comprehensive Study of Liver Changes Associated with Onion Supplementation in Hypercholesterolemic Wistar Rats

The consumption of functional ingredients has been suggested to be a complementary tool for the prevention and management of liver disease. In this light, processed onion can be considered as a source of multiple bioactive compounds with hepatoprotective properties. The liver fingerprint of male Wistar rats (n = 24) fed with three experimental diets (control (C), high-cholesterol (HC), and high-cholesterol enriched with onion (HCO) diets) was obtained through a non-targeted, multiplatform metabolomics approach to produce broad metabolite coverage. LC-MS, CE-MS and GC-MS results were subjected to univariate and multivariate analyses, providing a list of significant metabolites. All data were merged in order to figure out the most relevant metabolites that were modified by the onion ingredient. Several relevant metabolic changes and related metabolic pathways were found to be impacted by both HC and HCO diet. The model highlighted several metabolites (such as hydroxybutyryl carnitine and palmitoyl carnitine) modified by the HCO diet. These findings could suggest potential impairments in the energy-lipid metabolism, perturbations in the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA) cycle and -oxidation modulated by the onion supplementation in the core of hepatic dysfunction. Metabolomics shows to be a valuable tool to evaluate the effects of complementary dietetic approaches directed to hepatic damage amelioration or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) prevention.