American journal of physiology. Lung cellular and molecular physiology
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Am. J. Physiol. Lung Cell Mol. Physiol. · Oct 2018
ReviewEvolution of ARDS biomarkers: Will metabolomics be the answer?
To date, there is no clinically agreed-upon diagnostic test for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS): the condition is still diagnosed on the basis of a constellation of clinical findings, laboratory tests, and radiological images. Development of ARDS biomarkers has been in a state of continuous flux during the past four decades. To address ARDS heterogeneity, several studies have recently focused on subphenotyping the disease on the basis of observable clinical characteristics and associated blood biomarkers. ⋯ Generally, the ARDS metabolomics studies focused on identification of differentiating metabolites for diagnosing ARDS, but they were performed to different standards in terms of sample size, selection of control cohort, type of specimens collected, and measuring technique utilized. Virtually none of these studies have been properly validated to identify true metabolomics biomarkers of ARDS. Though in their infancy, metabolomics studies exhibit promise to unfold the biological processes underlying ARDS and, in our opinion, have great potential for pushing forward our present understanding of ARDS.