Metabonomics

Metabonomics broadly aims to measure the global, dynamic metabolic response of living systems to biological stimuli or genetic manipulation. The focus is on understanding systemic change through time in complex multicellular systems. Metabolomics seeks an analytical description of complex biological samples, and aims to characterize and quantify all the small molecules in such a sample.

All metabonomics studies result in complex multivariate data sets the require visualisation software and chemometric and bioinformatic methods for interpretation.

Metabonomics has great potential for intensive care medicine, where patients are complex and understanding the relationship of host factors, disease and treatment effects is key to improving care.