Dataset for liver metabolomic profile of highland barley Monascus purpureus went extract-treated golden hamsters with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is a serious problem endangering human health in the world. The pathogenesis of this disease is often accompanied by lipid metabolism disorder and can cause liver lipid accumulation. Highland barley Monascus purpureus Went extract (HBMPWE) can inhibit the liver lipid accumulation caused by a high-fat, high-fructose, high-cholesterol diet. However, it is not clear what changes have taken place in the process of liver lipid metabolism after HBMPWE administration. To fill this knowledge gap and to support the findings published in the companion research article entitled “Highland Barley Monascus purpureus Went Extract Ameliorates High-Fat, High-Fructose, High-Cholesterol Diet Induced Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease by Regulating Lipid Metabolism in Golden Hamsters” [1], we provided important information related to the liver differential metabolites and identified twenty-one differential metabolites of liver metabolism. In the model group, the levels of lactate, linoleic acid, and malic acid increased significantly. After HBMPWE treatment, the expressions of these metabolites reduced significantly. Therefore, these liver differential metabolites could be used as biological signatures reflecting the severity of NAFLD and HBMPWE treatment outcomes.


a b s t r a c t
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is a serious problem endangering human health in the world. The pathogenesis of this disease is often accompanied by lipid metabolism disorder and can cause liver lipid accumulation. Highland barley Monascus purpureus Went extract (HBMPWE) can inhibit the liver lipid accumulation caused by a high-fat, high-fructose, high-cholesterol diet. However, it is not clear what changes have taken place in the process of liver lipid metabolism after HBMPWE administration. To fill this knowledge gap and to support the findings published in the companion research article entitled "Highland Barley Monascus purpureus Went Extract Ameliorates High-Fat, High-Fructose, High-Cholesterol Diet Induced Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease by Regulating Lipid Metabolism in Golden Hamsters" [1] , we provided important information related to the liver differential metabolites and identified twenty-one differential metabolites of liver metabolism. In the model group, the levels of lactate, linoleic acid, and malic acid increased significantly. After HBMPWE treatment, the expressions of these metabolites reduced significantly. Therefore, these liver differential metabolites could be used as biological signatures reflecting the severity of NAFLD and HBMPWE treatment outcomes. ©

Value of the Data
• These data of differential metabolites are closely correlated with lipid metabolism index, body weight, and liver index. The changes of differential metabolites play important role in predicting and studying the mechanism of NAFLD. • Researchers working on pathogenesis, mechanism, biological function of metabolites of NAFLD can benefit from these data. It can be judged the pathophysiological state of the liver, speculated the mechanism, and verified the biological function according to differential metabolites of NAFLD. • These data might be used for studying targeted metabonomics and looking for genes related to metabolic pathways according to differential metabolites, so as to clarify the mechanism of NAFLD.

Screening of liver differential metabolites after HBMPWE treatment
The orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA)-supervised pattern recognition method was applied to identify the overall metabolic differences between two  groups ( Fig. 1 ) [2] . There were obviously separated clusters between two groups (model group versus normal group, HBMPWE-high group versus model group, HBMPWE-high group vs normal group). The validation parameters R 2 Y values were close to 1, and Q 2 values were greater than 0.5 ( Fig. 2 and Table 1 ), indicating that model had good reliability and predictability [3] . Under the OPLS-DA model, differentially regulated lipid species were identified in model group versus normal group and HBMPWE-high group versus model group using following criteria: P < 0.05, VIP (variable importance in the projection) > 1. The metabolic set was created, and a Venn diagram was made to screen common differential metabolites ( Fig. 3 ) [4] .

Plant materials, extract preparation
HBMPW was provided by Tibet Yuewang Medicine Diagnosis Ecological Tibetan Medicine Science and Technology Co., Ltd. (Lot Number: 20190408, Lhasa, China). HBMPW powder was soaked in 70% EtOH for 12 h and added into percolation tube layer by layer. The percolation extract was placed in a large rotary evaporator for vacuum concentration to obtain a dry extract [14] .

Liver metabolomic analysis
Male golden hamsters (110 −130 g, SPF) were divided into three groups ( n = 8 per group): Normal, NAFLD model, and NAFLD + HBMPWE groups, NAFLD model, and NAFLD + HBMPWE groups were fed with HFFCD for six weeks. From the third week of feeding HFFCD, the animals in NAFLD + HBMPWE group received 168 mg/kg/d HBMPWE by intragastric administration. After 4 weeks of continuous administration, all the male golden hamsters were fasted but given water for 12 h. Subsequently, the male golden hamsters were anesthetized and sacrificed to obtain the livers, which were flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C for further metabolomics analysis [15] .
Liver samples were extracted using methanol and water with homogenization. The mixture was allowed to settle at −20 °C and treated by high throughput tissue crusher Wonbio-96c (Shanghai Wanbo Biotechnology Co., Ltd., China) at 50 Hz for 6 min, then followed by vortex for 30 s and ultrasound at 40 kHz for 30 min at 5 °C. The samples were placed at −20 °C for 30 min to precipitate proteins. After centrifugation at 13,0 0 0 g at 4 °C for 15 min, the supernatant was carefully transferred to sample vials for LC-MS/MS analysis. The mass spectrometric data was collected by a Thermo UHPLC-Q Exactive Mass Spectrometer equipped with an electrospray ionization (ESI) source operating in either positive or negative ion mode.

Statistical analysis
The original data from UPLC-QTOF/MS was processed by Progenesis QI (Waters Corporation, Milford, USA). These data were analyzed by the platform of Majorbio Cloud Platform ( www.majorbio.com ) for principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA). The differential metabolites were selected by using the VIP value and the P value (VIP > 1.0 and P < 0.05) [16] .

Ethics Statement
The experiments with male golden hamsters complied with the National Institutes of Health guide for the care and use of Laboratory animals (NIH Publications No.8023, revised 1978, https: //nihpublications.od.nih.gov/ ).

Declaration of Competing Interest
All authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.