Metabolomic profiling in children with inflammatory bowel disease

Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) represent inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) with multifactorial pathogenesis, involving genetic, environmental and microbial factors. Interactions between gut microbiota and immune system result in changes in metabolic pathways. Metabolomics is a comprehensive and quantitative (or semi-quantitative) analysis of metabolites synthetized in human's biological system. It has been shown that metabolic profiling might be used to identify disease biomarkers. Recent findings confirmed alterations in the number of metabolites in patients with IBD. However, most of the studies included adult individuals with ongoing treatment which might have affected the metabolite profiling. Therefore, the aim of our study was to collect the knowledge about metabolomics in paediatric patients with CD or UC based on the currently published literature.