Abstract: In the present study, we investigated the anti-aging effect of procyanidin B2 in D-galactose-induced aging in mice and explored the changes of characteristic metabolites. Four week-old mice were used in this study and randomly divided into normal control group, D-galactose-induced aging group, and procyanidin B2 group. After six weeks of administration, learning and memory capacity in each group were tested by open field maze, Y-maize and Morris water maze and total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity and malondialdehyde (MDA) content in the brain, liver and kidney of mice were evaluated. The metabolites were analyzed by liquid chromatography quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS). The results showed that procyanidin B2 improved learning capacity and it increased significantly T-AOC, SOD and GSH-Px activity, and decreased significantly the content of MDA in liver, brain and kidney tissues when compared with the aging model mice (P < 0.05). Moreover, procyanidin B2 changed the levels of 17 characteristic metabolites, including pantothenic acid, pyruvic acid, linoleic acid, and alpha ketoglutarate, as detected by LC-Q-TOF-MS combined with multivariate statistical analysis. These results indicated that procyanidin B2 was a potential nutrition supplement with anti-aging effect and its underlying mechanism may be associated with a series of metabolism pathways, such as glucose metabolism and lipid metabolism.

Key words: procyanidin B2, anti-aging, antioxidant, metabolomics