Metabolomics in critical care medicine: a new approach to biomarker discovery.

PURPOSE To present an overview and comparison of the main metabolomics techniques (1H NMR, GC-MS, and LC-MS) and their current and potential use in critical care medicine. SOURCE This is a focused review, not a systematic review, using the PubMed database as the predominant source of references to compare metabolomics techniques. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS 1H NMR, GC-MS, and LC-MS are complementary techniques that can be used on a variety of biofluids for metabolomics analysis of patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). These techniques have been successfully used for diagnosis and prognosis in the ICU and other clinical settings; for example, in patients with septic shock and community-acquired pneumonia. CONCLUSION Metabolomics is a powerful tool that has strong potential to impact diagnosis and prognosis and to examine responses to treatment in critical care medicine through diagnostic and prognostic biomarker and biopattern identification.