1H NMR-metabolomics: can they be a useful tool in our understanding of cardiac arrest?

Abstract

Objective: This review focuses on the presentation of the emerging technology of metabolomics, a promising tool for the detection of identifying the unrevealed biological pathways that lead to cardiac arrest.

Data sources: The electronic bases of PubMed, Scopus, and EMBASE were searched. Research terms were identified using the MESH database and were combined thereafter. Initial search terms were "cardiac arrest", "cardiopulmonary resuscitation", "post-cardiac arrest syndrome" combined with "metabolomics".

Results: Metabolomics allow the monitoring of hundreds of metabolites from tissues or body fluids and already influence research in the field of cardiac metabolism. This approach has elucidated several pathophysiological mechanisms and identified profiles of metabolic changes that can be used to follow the disease processes occurring in the peri-arrest period. This can be achieved through leveraging the strengths of unbiased metabolome-wide scans, which include thousands of final downstream products of gene transcription, enzyme activity and metabolic products of extraneously administered substances, in order to identify a metabolomic fingerprint associated with an increased risk of cardiac arrest.

Conclusion: Although this technology is still under development, metabolomics is a promising tool for elucidating biological pathways and discovering clinical biomarkers, strengthening the efforts for optimizing both the prevention and treatment of cardiac arrest.

Keywords: Cardiac arrest; Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; Metabolomics.