Metabolomics Yield a Novel Biomarker for Predicting Diabetes Mellitus Risk in Humans

1. Gerszten RE, Wang TJ. The search for new cardiovascular biomarkers. Nature . 2008;451:949–952.2. Knowler WC, Barrett-Connor E, Fowler SE, Hamman RF, Lachin JM, Walker EA, et al; Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. Reduction in the incidence of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention or metformin. N Engl J Med . 2002;346:393–403.3. Wang TJ, Ngo D, Psychogios N, Dejam A, Larson MG, Vasan RS, et al. 2-Aminoadipic acid is a biomarker for diabetes risk. J Clin Invest . 2013;123:4309–4317.Recent advances in omics technologies have yielded fascinating opportunities for risk prediction1 of common diseases like hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Identifying biomarkers for predicting risk of diabetes mellitus can help in selecting individuals that would benefit a great deal from the proven preventative strategies for diabetes mellitus.2 In a landmark initiative, Wang et al3 sought to identify metabolite biomarkers of diabetes mellitus risk using high-throughput metabolite profiling from plasma samples of 2 large epidemiological cohorts and followed-up their findings with a series of mechanistic studies in a mice model and human tissues.The authors performed a nested case–control study …