Abstract
Metabonomics is an established technology concerned with the analysis of human and animal biofluids to reveal and understand changes in metabolite profiles resulting from interventions such as drug administration, disease, aging, and genetic change. Typically, these studies are performed through analysis of metabolites in biofluids such as urine or blood plasma by using powerful analytical technologies such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy or liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. Pharmacometabonomics is a newer technology concerned with the use of predose metabolite profiles to predict responses to drugs prior to dosing. Differences observed in responses to drugs such as varying pharmacokinetics, metabolism, efficacy, or toxicity in different subgroups of patients may be correlated with differences in predose metabolite profiles between those particular patient subgroups. This, then, enables prediction of drug response in patients on the basis of predose metabolite profile analysis. Pharmacometabonomics is, thus, a valuable aid to decision making in stratified or Personalized Medicine.