Lipidomic profiling of the febrile rat hypothalamus by the intervention of Artemisia japonica extracts.

Artemisia species have been regarded as an important source of ethnic medicinal plants, such as A. annua and A. capillaris, both of which are widely used in clinical treatment. The clinical efficacy of A. japonica is similar to that of A. capillaris, but fewer pharmaceutical studies have been reported. Given that the extracts of A. japonica were observed to reduce the rectal temperature of febrile rats induced by LPS, this study was designed to demonstrate this regulatory effect of the extracts, with a particular focus on the lipidomic profiling of the febrile rat hypothalamus. A total of 72 differential metabolites were filtered out and the association between lipid profiling and potential mechanism was explored. Sphingolipid, glycerophospholipid, arachidonic acid and ether lipid metabolism pathways were significantly enriched. TNF-α, IL-6 and PGE2 cytokines in the hypothalamus were significantly downregulated by the intervention of the extracts of A. japonica. Enzymatic reaction enrichment analysis suggested that PEMT and COX-2 might be potential targets of the efficacy, and which were testified to be downregulated by the ELISA assay under the extracts intervention.