Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Specialità Mediche, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy.
Autoimmun Rev. 2013 Aug;12(10):1022-30. doi: 10.1016/j.autrev.2013.04.002. Epub 2013 May 18.
Metabolomics belongs to the family of "-omics" sciences, also comprised of genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, all of which share the advantage of a non-targeted approach for identifying biomarkers and profiling the patient. This means that they do not require a preliminary knowledge of the substances to be studied. Moreover, even small quantities of biological fluids or tissues may be utilized for analysis. Metabolomic procedure has become feasible only recently with the advent and accessibility of new high-throughput technologies, including mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance. The methodology generally involves three defining steps: 1) the acquisition of experimental data, 2) the multivariate statistical analysis, and 3) the projection of the acquired information (profiles) to construct the patient map. Metabolomic analysis has been applied to several disorders: as far as rheumatic diseases are concerned, a few studies have focused on rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and osteoarthritis. Both murine models and clinical data have shown the potential of this novel tool to contribute to deciding a diagnosis, discriminate between patients based on disease activity, and even predict the response to a particular treatment. The present review fully reports these findings and offers a critical view of the challenges still to be met.
代谢组学属于“组学”科学家族，还包括基因组学、转录组学和蛋白质组学，所有这些都具有一个非靶向方法的优势，用于识别生物标志物和描绘患者特征。这意味着它们不需要对要研究的物质有初步的了解。此外，即使是少量的生物体液或组织也可用于分析。只有随着新的高通量技术（包括质谱和核磁共振）的出现和普及，代谢组学方法才成为可能。该方法通常包括三个定义步骤：1）获取实验数据，2）多变量统计分析，以及 3）获取信息（图谱）的投影以构建患者图谱。代谢组学分析已应用于多种疾病：就风湿性疾病而言，一些研究集中在类风湿关节炎、脊柱关节炎、系统性红斑狼疮和骨关节炎上。动物模型和临床数据都表明，这种新工具具有帮助做出诊断、根据疾病活动区分患者，甚至预测对特定治疗的反应的潜力。本综述全面报告了这些发现，并对仍需解决的挑战进行了批判性评价。
