Objective: To study biomarkers and their diversification in healthy people’s urine before and after oral administration of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction, a compound Chinese herbal medicine, and to investigate the influence of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction on urine metabonomics of healthy people.
Methods: Ten healthy volunteers joined in this experiment and signed informed consent. They were given oral administration of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction for 3 days, and their urine was collected every morning. The samples were centrifuged at 13 000 ×g for 10 min at 4 ℃, and the supernatant was stored at –75 ℃. The samples were examined by a core technology called ultra-performance liquid chromatography quadruple time of flight/mass spectrometry and then the data were analyzed by principal components analysis and partial least square-discriminant analysis to investigate trajectory diversification and corresponding relations of the time and amount of urine metabonomics before and after oral administration of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction.
Results: Evident variance of urine metabonomics took place after oral administration of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction, which showed that the metabolism of healthy people had been visibly affected. Seven potential biomarkers which play a role in healthy people on behalf of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction were preliminarily found, and one biomarker which had biological significance was identified as 2-(formylamino)-benzoic acid.
Conclusion: The effects of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction on urine metabonomics in healthy people investigated at the level of metabolism can provide theoretical and technical support for the study of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction’s influence on heat syndrome.

Key words: drugs, Chinese herbal, Huanglian Jiedu Decoction, healthy people, urine, metabonomics, biomarkers, pharmacological