Application of metabolomics for unveiling the therapeutic role of traditional Chinese medicine in metabolic diseases

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Traditional medicine has been practiced for thousands of years in China and some Asian countries. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is characterized as multi-component and multiple targets in disease therapy, and it is a great challenge for elucidating the mechanisms of TCM. Aim of the review: Comprehensively summarize the application of metabolomics in biomarker discovery, stratification of TCM syndromes, and mechanism underlying TCM therapy on metabolic diseases. Methods: This review systemically searched the publications with key words such as metabolomics, traditional Chinese medicine, metabolic diseases, obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus in Title OR Abstract in major databases including PubMed, the Web of Science, Google Scholar, Science Direct, CNKI from 2010 to 2019. Results: A total of 135 papers was searched and included in this review. An overview of articles indicated that metabolic characteristics may be a hallmark of different syndromes/models of metabolic diseases, which provides a new perspective for disease diagnosis and therapeutic optimization. Moreover, TCM treatment has significantly altered the metabolic perturbations associated with metabolic diseases, which may be an important mechanism for the therapeutic effect of TCM. Conclusions: Until now, many metabolites and differential biomarkers related to the pathogenesis of metabolic diseases and TCM therapy have been discovered through metabolomics research. Unfortunately, the biological role and mechanism of disease-related metabolites were largely unclarified so far, which warrants further investigation.