Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada; Department of Pediatrics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada.
Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Chest. 2012 May;141(5):1295-1302. doi: 10.1378/chest.11-2028.
Asthma is one of the most common chronic illnesses, especially in children. Reaching the diagnosis of asthma and its management are more difficult than for other chronic illnesses. For example, asthma is a heterogeneous syndrome with many clinical classifications based on patient symptoms, lung function, and response to therapy. The symptoms and objective measurements of lung function, often used to guide therapy, are largely based on the inflammation of the airways. Because measuring airway dysfunction and inflammation in a typical clinical setting is difficult, it is often not done. Metabolomics is the study of small molecules generated from cellular metabolic activity. It is possible that the metabolic profile of a patient with a chronic illness such as asthma is different from that of a healthy patient or from a patient with another respiratory illness. Furthermore, if this metabolome could be measured, it might also vary with disease severity. The pattern of metabolites becomes the diagnostic representing the disease. This article outlines the more recent work that has been done to develop the metabolomic profile of asthma.
哮喘是最常见的慢性疾病之一，尤其在儿童中较为常见。与其他慢性疾病相比，哮喘的诊断和管理更为困难。例如，哮喘是一种具有多种临床分类的异质性综合征，其分类依据包括患者症状、肺功能和对治疗的反应。常被用于指导治疗的症状和肺功能的客观测量，主要基于气道炎症。由于在典型的临床环境中测量气道功能障碍和炎症较为困难，因此通常不进行此类测量。代谢组学是研究细胞代谢活动产生的小分子的学科。患有哮喘等慢性疾病的患者的代谢谱可能与健康患者或患有其他呼吸道疾病的患者不同。此外，如果可以测量这种代谢组，它也可能随疾病的严重程度而变化。代谢物的模式成为代表疾病的诊断。本文概述了最近在开发哮喘代谢组特征方面所做的工作。
