Objective To investigate the effect of ethanolic extract of Cichorium glandulosum Boiss.et Huet.on fecal bile acid profiles in high-fat-diet-induced obese mice.Methods Twenty-four 6-week-old C57 BL/6 male mice were divided randomly into normal,model,drug-administration,and metformin groups.Mice in the normal group were fed a regular diet and mice in the other three groups were given high-fat diets.The drug-administration group was gavaged with 10 mL/kg ethanol extract of Cichorium glandulosum Boiss.et Huet.daily,and the metformin group was gavaged with 10 mL/kg metformin daily.After 10 weeks,livers were collected to measure hepatic total triglycerides(TG),total cholesterol(TC),low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol(LDL-C),and high-density lipoprotein(HDL)-C.Feces were collected and analyzed.Results Body weight(P＜0.0001),liver TG(P＜0.05),and TC(P＞0.05)were all significantly higher in model mice compared with normal mice,while LDL-C(P＞0.05)and HDL-C(P＜0.001)were significantly lower,indicating abnormal weight gain and lipid metabolism.Alcoholic extract of Cichorium glandulosum Boiss.et Huet.significantly reduced body weight(P＜0.0001),liver TG(P＜0.0001),serum TG(P＜0.05),TC(P＜0.01),and LDL-C(P＜0.05)in mice.Methodsological validation showed that the current method could accurately quantify 52 bile acids in feces.Analysis of the concentration of each type of bile acid revealed that alcoholic extract of Cichorium glandulosum Boiss.et Huet.significantly increased the secondary/primary bile acid ratio(P＜0.05).Multivariate analysis showed that the bile acid metabolic pattern was significantly altered in all groups.Eight differential bile acids were screened in the drug-administration group relative to the model group using variable importance of projection＞1 and P＜0.05.A search of the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes database revealed that the differential bile acids were mainly involved in the secondary bile acid biosynthesis pathway.Correlation analysis showed that four differential bile acids,deoxycholic acid(r,=0.6445,P＜0.001),isolithocholic acid(r,=0.5879,P＜0.01),3β-deoxycholic acid(r,=0.6649,P＜0.001),and ω-rhamnoglutaric acid(rs=0.5387,P＜0.01),in feces were strongly positively correlated with body weight.Conclusions Cichorium glandulosum Boiss.et Huet.alcoholic extract may play a role in weight reduction and amelioration of dyslipidemia by modulating secondary bile acid biosynthesis and altering fecal bile acid metabolic profiles.