Using metabolomics to identify biomarkers for metabolic diseases: analytical methods and applications
Résumé
Shifts in dietary pattern and a modification in physical activity known as “nutritional transition” have led to an energy imbalance with an increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity and the associated pathologies such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and cardiovascular diseases. This chapter will cover how metabolomics applied to animals and humans, using biological fluids (such as urine and blood of cases (metabolic syndrome and T2DM) and control individuals), enabled acquiring new knowledge on potential biomarkers of disease state. Furthermore, when laboratory animals were used, fluid or tissue metabolomics also allowed new metabolic pathways to be elucidated that had not previously been thought to participate in such metabolic disorders. In some studies, description of the metabolome also enabled unravelling of the mechanisms behind the phenotypes. Metabolomics applied to epidemiological studies with a 5–10 year follow-up is also leading to potential predictive biomarkers of the evolution of healthy status to a disease state. Limitations of this tool in this field of research will be discussed. Finally, the potential of metabolomics imaging and the coupling of mass spectrometry to histological techniques is assessed as a possibility for discovering the in situ mechanisms involved in the evolution from a healthy status to metabolic dysfunction, which would then enable these new biomarkers to be used in clinics