Metabolomics perspectives in pediatric research

Abstract

Increasing evidence points toward the critical and long-term involvement of prenatal and early nutrition and lifestyle on later health and disease risk predisposition. Metabolomics is now a well-established top-down systems biology approach that explores the genetic-environment-health paradigm. The generalization of such approaches has opened new research areas to deepen our current understanding of many physiological processes, as well as foods and nutrient functionalities in target populations. It is envisioned that this will provide new avenues toward preventive medicine and prognostic strategies for tailored therapeutic and personalized nutrition management. The development of systems biology approaches and the new generation of biomarker patterns will provide the opportunity to associate complex metabolic regulations with the etiology of multifactorial pediatric diseases. This may subsequently lead to the development of system mechanistic hypotheses that could be targeted with new nutritional personalized concepts. Therefore, this review aims to describe recent applications of metabolomics in preclinical and clinical fields with insights into disease diagnostics/monitoring and improvement of homeostasis metabolic regulation that may be translatable to novel therapeutic and nutrition advances in pediatric research. Over the past decades, awareness about the role of nutrition and lifestyle in health and disease risk management has increased, with key emphasis on the prevention of metabolic disorders, including cardiometabolic diseases and type 2 diabetes (1-3). In parallel, increasing evidence points toward the critical and long-term involvement of early nutrition and lifestyle on later health and disease risk predisposition (4). It therefore becomes pertinent to look at newborn metabolism, development, and nutritional requirements to understand the onset of child and adult physiological conditions. Pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and human milk composition are influenced by the intake of foods (macro-and micronutrients), which subsequently determine both the short-and long-term health and nutritional outcomes of an individual (5). Therefore, it is essential to build knowledge not only on the metabolic dysregulations but also on the effects of specific foods to comprehensively document the metabolic processes associated with individual health at the different stages of the life cycle (Figure 1). This will allow us to formulate nutritional solutions to improve or circumvent certain metabolic imbalances.The generalization of systems biology approaches has opened new research areas to further our current understanding of many physiological processes, as well as the functionalities of foods and nutrients. In particular, metabolomics is recognized as a powerful top-down systems biology approach to understand the genetic-environment-health paradigm and to identify clinically relevant biomarkers. Its application in clinical studies is envisioned to shed new light on the regulatory processes of complex mammalian sy...

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