Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a common diseases in critical ill patients, which is an acute-onset hypoxic condition with radiographic bilateral lung infiltration. And it can be divided into two phases in pathophysiology: an acute exudative phase combining diffuse alveolar damage and lung edema followed by a later fibro proliferative phase. The early prediction and risk assessment of patients with ARDS is still very poor in the clinical. In recent years, researchers gradually focus their research on exploration of biomarkers of ARDS. The article mainly aims to sum up the development of biomarkers exploration.