Metabonomics: biomarkers for healthy aging stratification and elderly nutritional health monitoring.

摘要

Aging is a very complex process because many biochemical processes happen to human organisms that affect all levels, from organ to cells, and lead to a wide variety of altered biochemical functions. Whilst it is possible to determine the metabolic and nutritional status of individuals in a given stage, challenges remain to understand how the metabolism of an individual drifts towards an unhealthy stage. This requires novel approaches enabling the phenotypic characterization of the gradual development of age-related chronic disorders at epidemiological and individual scales. Metabonomics is a valuable tool for investigating in a single approach changes in metabolic regulations, and then linking these to the phenotypic outcome. As such, the characterization of key pathways involved in aging could provide benefits in specific aging conditions, as in frailty. If frailty represents a transitional phase between successful aging and negative health outcomes, the availability of potential metabolic readouts may enable in the future the proper identification of "at risk" subjects and monitor the evolution of their "at risk" conditions under different nutrition and healthcare management programs.