High Throughput Metabolomics in Clinical Studies: Review and New Applications to Remote Ischemic Preconditioning

Metabolomic analysis has made substantial contributions to the understanding of diverse pathological processes and has the potential to improve diagnosis and identify novel therapeutic targets. As early success in perinatal medicine, nutrition, chronic diseases, cancer and trauma demonstrates, metabolomics is approaching feasibility in terms of guiding improvement in population-level diagnosis and treatment. A key barrier to implementing metabolomics as a routine diagnostic tool is rapid sample extraction and data analysis along with the establishment of normal values for novel metabolic markers. This review covers key advancements in clinical metabolomics and applies a high throughput metabolomics method as a proof of principle to identify novel metabolites associated with remote ischemic preconditioning.