Metabonomics: the future of personalized healthcare in liver intensive care?

Metabonomics involves the use of high-resolution analytical platforms to characterize the low-molecular-mass metabolic composition of biofluids and tissues. The resulting complex metabolic phenotype data are modelled using multivariate statistical approaches to identify systems levels panels of metabolites that discriminate between phenotypes (metabotypes), providing mechanistic insight and candidate biomarkers. With the increasing incidence of liver cirrhosis nationally, the pressures on NHS liver units is set to intensify, with mortality rates in these patients remaining high. This article describes a personalized medicine approach to stratify patients' mortality risk using metabolic phenotyping. This could aid doctors in clinical decision-making for patient transplant candidacy and critical care management to improve current survival rates.