Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2005 Mar;1(1):3-9.
doi: 10.1007/s11306-005-1102-8.

Metabolomics: building on a century of biochemistry to guide human health

J Bruce German, Bruce D Hammock, Steven M Watkins

Metabolomics: building on a century of biochemistry to guide human health

J Bruce German et al. Metabolomics. 2005 Mar.

Abstract

Medical diagnosis and treatment efficacy will improve significantly when a more personalized system for health assessment is implemented. This system will require diagnostics that provide sufficiently detailed information about the metabolic status of individuals such that assay results will be able to guide food, drug and lifestyle choices to maintain or improve distinct aspects of health without compromising others. Achieving this goal will use the new science of metabolomics - comprehensive metabolic profiling of individuals linked to the biological understanding of human integrative metabolism. Candidate technologies to accomplish this goal are largely available, yet they have not been brought into practice for this purpose. Metabolomic technologies must be sufficiently rapid, accurate and affordable to be routinely accessible to both healthy and acutely ill individuals. The use of metabolomic data to predict the health trajectories of individuals will require bioinformatic tools and quantitative reference databases. These databases containing metabolite profiles from the population must be built, stored and indexed according to metabolic and health status. Building and annotating these databases with the knowledge to predict how a specific metabolic pattern from an individual can be adjusted with diet, drugs and lifestyle to improve health represents a logical application of the biochemistry knowledge that the life sciences have produced over the past 100 years.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Alberti G. Noncommunicable diseases: tomorrow's pandemics. Bull. World Health Organ. 2001;79:907. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brindle JT, Antti H, Holmes E, et al. Rapid and noninvasive diagnosis of the presence and severity of coronary heart disease using 1H-NMR-based metabonomics. Nat. Med. 2002;8:1439–1444. - PubMed
    1. Bruckert E, Giral P, Tellier P. Microarray analysis reveals a major direct role of DNA copy number alteration in the transcriptional program of human breast tumors. Circulation. 2003;107:3124–3128. - PubMed
    1. Carpenter KJ. A short history of nutritional science: part 3 (1912–1944) J. Nutr. 2003a;133:3023–3032. - PubMed
    1. Carpenter KJ. A short history of nutritional science: part 4 (1945–1985) J. Nutr. 2003b;133:3331–3342. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources