Metabonomics in Clinical Practice

Abstract

Metabonomics is recognized as a powerful top-down system biology approach to understand genetic-environment-health paradigm paving new avenues to identify clinically relevant biomarkers. It is nowadays commonly used in clinical applications shedding new light on physiological regulatory processes of complex mammalian systems as regards disease etiology, diagnostic stratification, and potentially mechanism of action of therapeutic solutions. It therefore offers opportunities to associate complex metabolic regulations to the etiology of multifactorial diseases and metabolic dysfunctions, which may subsequently lead to mechanistic hypotheses and targets for new nutritional concepts. This review aims at describing recent applications of metabonomics in clinical fields with insight into diseases diagnostics/monitoring and improvement of homeostasis metabolic regulation.