A Scoping Review of the Application of Metabolomics in Nutrition Research: The Literature Survey 2000–2019

Abstract

Nutrimetabolomics is an emerging field in nutrition research, and it is expected to play a significant role in deciphering the interaction between diet and health. Through the development of omics technology over the last two decades, the definition of food and nutrition has changed from sources of energy and major/micro-nutrients to an essential exposure factor that determines health risks. Furthermore, this new approach has enabled nutrition research to identify dietary biomarkers and to deepen the understanding of metabolic dynamics and the impacts on health risks. However, so far, candidate markers identified by metabolomics have not been clinically applied and more efforts should be made to validate those. To help nutrition researchers better understand the potential of its application, this scoping review outlined the historical transition, recent focuses, and future prospects of the new realm, based on trends in the number of human research articles from the early stage of 2000 to the present of 2019 by searching the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE). Among them, objective dietary assessment, metabolic profiling, and health risk prediction were positioned as three of the principal applications. The continued growth will enable nutrimetabolomics research to contribute to personalized nutrition in the future.

A double-blinded, randomized, parallel intervention to evaluate biomarker-based nutrition plans for weight loss: The PREVENTOMICS study

“…Integrating these multi-omics offers unprecedented opportunities in multiple fields of science, including nutrition. In particular, the application of metabolomics in the nutrition sciences has deepened the understanding of the association between diet and health, and helped identify relevant biomarkers [11,12]. This has led to the emerging concept of "metabotyping" (metabolic phenotypes) which refers to stratifying individuals into relatively homogenous subgroups based on their similarities of metabolic signatures (i.e., metabolic profiling) [13].…”

Potential cardiotoxicity induced by Euodiae Fructus: In vivo and in vitro experiments and untargeted metabolomics research

“…As the terminal of an organism’s biological process, an altered metabolism is one of the hallmarks of noxious effects in the heart, where changes in protein expression and injures in cardiac function ultimately lead to aberrant cellular metabolism ( Kroemer et al, 2018 ; Luz and Tokar, 2018 ). Fortunately, the emergence of metabolomics research has provided a new approach to statistically and quantitatively visualizing evidence according to the dynamic information in overall profiles of endogenous metabolites after the biological system has suffered from exogenous disturbance and stimulation ( Al-Ansari et al, 2021 ; Shibutami and Takebayashi, 2021 ; Spyroglou et al, 2021 ). Indeed, a burst of research utilizing untargeted metabolomics technology has been published in the field of cardiac toxicology over the past decades, based on the dual advantages of global material scanning and the accuracy of material annotation, and contributing to numerous methodological advances in interpreting the enrolled metabolic pathway and toxic mechanism ( Parry et al, 2018 ; Palmer et al, 2020 ).…”

Harnessing Metabolomics to Advance Epilepsy Research

“…The metabolome represents the aggregate chemical output from multiple internal and external factors affecting the body (e.g., genes, proteins, diet, microbiota, drugs, and toxins; Figure 1 ). The individual variability in these factors reflects the metabolic phenotype for each person, and fluctuates in response to physiological or pathological events, such as nutrition, 15 biological rhythms, 16 gut microbial changes, 17 or infection and inflammation. 18 Below, we discuss how the integrative and dynamic properties of the metabolome create a unique approach to study complex pathologies that evolve and oscillate over time, like epilepsy.…”

“…However, some of these fluctuations may be unwanted and result in experimental noise. Factors known to influence the metabolome include age, 48 sex, 49 genotype, 2 medications, 50 diet, 15 time of day, 16 estrous cycle, 49 and stress 51 ( Figure 1 ). The effects can be substantial and sometimes greatly exceed the variation caused by the analytical method.…”