Metabolomic profiling as a useful tool for diagnosis and treatment of chronic disease: focus on obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases

There have been considerable improvements in therapeutics for chronic diseases. However, the maximum benefit of these or other options are hard to achieve in practice, due in part to the difficulties associated with determining optimal targets for such interventions. Recent developments have suggested that understanding changes in metabolite profiles will confer a high degree of predictive accuracy in terms of understanding the fundamental mechanisms resulting in perturbations of the metabolic state. Metabolomics involves the establishment of relationships between phenotype and a metabolic signature, which are key aspects of biological function. These approaches have been applied to the identification of serum/plasma metabolic markers involved in obesity, diabetes and vascular disease using animal models or in humans. Different kinds of metabolite profiling techniques using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, ultraperformance liquid chromatography and so on are currently employed to generate global metabolic profiles. Scientific information derived from these techniques can be applied to provide accurate and clinically useful prognostic/ diagnostic capability for the management of major chronic diseases. One current consideration limiting the widespread use of metabolomic profiling is the analysis of its cost-effectiveness. In summary, it is hoped that the information derived from metabolite profiling will make it possible to suggest individualized therapies that more effectively treat disease.