Current Progress of Lipid Analysis in Metabolic Diseases by Mass Spectrometry Methods

Background: Obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome are associated with lipid alterations, and they affect the risk of long-term cardiovascular disease. A reliable analytical instrument to detect changes in the composition or structures of lipids and the tools allowing to connect changes in a specific group of lipids with a specific disease and its progress, is constantly lacking. Lipidomics is a new field of medicine based on the research and identification of lipids and lipid metabolites present in human organism. The primary aim of lipidomics is to search for new biomarkers of different diseases, mainly civilization diseases. Objective: We aimed to review studies reporting the application of mass spectrometry for lipid analysis in metabolic diseases. Method: Following an extensive search of peer-reviewed articles on the mass spectrometry analysis of lipids the literature has been discussed in this review article. Results: The lipid group contains around 1.7 million species; they are totally different, in terms of the length of aliphatic chain, amount of rings, additional functional groups. Some of them are so complex that their complex analyses are a challenge for analysts. Their qualitative and quantitative analysis of is based mainly on mass spectrometry. Conclusion: Mass spectrometry techniques are excellent tools for lipid profiling in complex biological samples and the combination with multivariate statistical analysis enables the identification of potential diagnostic biomarkers.