Metabolomics applied to the discovery of tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus biomarkers

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) and diabetes mellitus Type 2 (DM2) are two diseases as ancient as they are harmful to human health. The outcome for both diseases in part depends on immune and metabolic individual responses. DM2 is increasing yearly, mainly due to environmental, genetic and lifestyle habits. There are multiple evidence that DM2 is one of the most important risk factor of becoming infected with TB or reactivating latent TB. Mass spectrometry-based metabolomics is an important tool for elucidating the metabolites and metabolic pathways that influence the immune responses to M. tuberculosis infection during diabetes. We provide an up-to-date review highlighting the importance and benefit of metabolomics for identifying biomarkers as candidate molecules for diagnosis, disease activity or prognosis.

Keywords: biomarkers; diabetes mellitus 2; diagnostics; mass spectrometry; metabolomics; tuberculosis.