title: Asthma Metabolomics and the Potential for Integrative Omics in Research and the Clinic.
abstract: Asthma is a complex disease well-suited to metabolomic profiling, both for the development of novel biomarkers and for the improved understanding of pathophysiology. In this review, we summarize the 21 existing metabolomic studies of asthma in humans, all of which reported significant findings and concluded that individual metabolites and metabolomic profiles measured in exhaled breath condensate, urine, plasma, and serum could identify people with asthma and asthma phenotypes with high discriminatory ability. There was considerable consistency across the studies in terms of the reported biomarkers, regardless of biospecimen, profiling technology, and population age. In particular, acetate, adenosine, alanine, hippurate, succinate, threonine, and trans-aconitate, and pathways relating to hypoxia response, oxidative stress, immunity, inflammation, lipid metabolism and the tricarboxylic acid cycle were all identified as significant in at least two studies. There were also a number of nonreplicated results; however, the literature is not yet sufficiently developed to determine whether these represent spurious findings or reflect the substantial heterogeneity and limited statistical power in the studies and their methods to date. This review highlights the need for additional asthma metabolomic studies to explore these issues, and, further, the need for standardized methods in the way these studies are conducted. We conclude by discussing the potential of translation of these metabolomic findings into clinically useful biomarkers and the crucial role that integrated omics is likely to play in this endeavor.
authors: Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
authors: Rachel S
authors: RS
authors: Kelly
authors: Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
authors: Amber
authors: A
authors: Dahlin
authors: Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
authors: Michael J
authors: MJ
authors: McGeachie
authors: Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
authors: Weiliang
authors: W
authors: Qiu
authors: Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, MA.
authors: Joanne
authors: J
authors: Sordillo
authors: Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; VA Boston Healthcare System, Department of Veterans Affairs, Boston, MA.
authors: Emily S
authors: ES
authors: Wan
authors: Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, MA.
authors: Ann Chen
authors: AC
authors: Wu
authors: Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Electronic address: rejas@channing.harvard.edu.
authors: Jessica
authors: J
authors: Lasky-Su
mesh_terms: D001249:Asthma / Q000378:metabolism*; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism*; D001944:Breath Tests; D002952:Citric Acid Cycle; D006801:Humans; D000860:Hypoxia / Q000378:metabolism*; D007249:Inflammation / Q000378:metabolism*; D050356:Lipid Metabolism; D055432:Metabolomics; D018384:Oxidative Stress
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers
keywords: asthma; biomarkers; integrative omics; metabolomics; proteomics