Abstract: Objective: To discover the difference of dexamethasone group and control group of pregnant mice in plasma metabolites during the embryonic palate development, and to lay foundations for discovering the specific metabolites during dexamethasone-induced cleft palate. Methods: Pregnant mice were collected and randomly divided into dexamethasone group (experimental group) and control group. During the specific pregnancy, the mice were peritoneally injected with certain amount of dexamethasone and saline respectively. After pregnant mice were sacrificed, plasma samples were collected in specific pregnancy and the incidence of mice cleft palate was estimated. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer was applied to get the nuclear magnetic resonance hydrogen spectrum diagram of pregnant mice plasma samples. When combined with principal component analysis and partial least squares depict the metabolic differences between the experimental group and the control group of pregnant mice plasma metabolites in the development stage of embryonic palate, specific metabolic markers of cleft palate induced by dexamethasone were obtained. Results: The experimental group and the control group were different in plasma metabolites during embryonic palatal development. Conclusion: Dexamethasone may cause changes in amino acid signal during the embryonic palatal fusion phase, and activate the related regulation mechanism, which delayed the embryonic development and resulted in cleft palate.

Key words: Dexamethasone, Cleft palate, Nuclear magnetic resonance hydrogen spectrum, Partial least squares method