Research progress of metabonomics in systemic lupus erythematosus / 中国医师杂志

ABSTRACT

By means of non-targeted quantitative determination of various low-molecular-weight metabolites in biological samples, metabonomics enables a better understanding of the metabolic variation in organisms subject to internal and external stimuli. As a result, it is particularly suitable for characterizing the metabonomic alternation associated with diseases and exploring the disease-related early metabolic biomarker clusters, which may provide a novel approach to the early diagnosis of diseases and individual medication. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multifactorial autoimmune disease in which autoantibodies can cause tissue damage and potentially life-threatening mul-tiple organ failure. The complicated pathogenesis and varied clinical symptoms of SLE pose great challenges for the diagnosis and monitoring of this disease. Development of new biomarkers that can be used to reliably confirm SLE or monitor its progression is still one of the main goals and challenges in SLE research. Metabolomics are alternative biomarker discovery approaches. In order to explore the application of metabolomics in SLE, we summarize the current progress in the field of metabtomics in the studies of SLE.