Establishing 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Based Metabonomics Fingerprinting Profile for Severe Poly Trauma Patients

Metabonomics is a set of measurements of the dynamic metabolic responses of living systems to stimuli or modifications. This field of study developed from the application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry as tools for the study of complex biofluids. Metabonomics is one of the emerging fields of systemic biology researches concerned with the high-throughput identification, quantification and characterization of small molecule metabolites. A metabonomics fingerprinting can be defined as the complete complement of all small molecule (<1500 Da) metabolites found in a specific cell, body fluid, organ or organism.

Severe poly trauma involves complex injuries that consist of multiple pathological mechanisms involving cytotoxic, oxidation stress and immune-endocrine. The complexity of the pathological physiology and biochemistry process are determined not only by the initial mechanical assault, but also by secondary processes including abnormality of inflammation regulation, ischemia, anoxia, free-radical formation, and immune dysfunction that occur over hours and days following the injury. For the clinical perspective, one of the key difficulties is to identify the most at-risk patients who could develop multiple organ failures and consequently death.

This study aims to establish the dynamics of NMR-based metabonomics fingerprinting of severe multi-trauma patients in order to provide a possible multiple organs failure (MOF) or death event prediction.