Metabolomic investigations of human infections

Abstract

Metabolomics has a special place among other ‘omics’ disciplines (genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics) as it describes the most dynamic level of biological regulation and, as such, provides the most direct reflection of the physiological status of an organism. Quick development of the analytical technologies in the first place – MS and NMR – has enabled the metabolomics analysis of such complex biological phenomena as host–pathogen interactions in the development of infection. In this review, an overview of the metabolomics studies of infectious diseases carried out on human material is provided. The relevant papers on the metabolomics of human infectious diseases are comprehensively summarized in a table, including, for example, information on the study design, number of subjects, employed technology and metabolic discriminator. Future considerations, such as importance of the time-resolved study designs and the embedment of metabolomics in large-scale epidemiological studies are discussed.