In their article, Abbondante et al. argue that alterations in a person’s nutrition affect the presence and characteristics of metabolites in the serum and liver controlled by circadian rhythms, and the effects are different for the two tissues (2824). The importance of the study is explained by the widespread practice of analyzing metabolites in the serum as part of diagnostic procedures; however, nutrition is not considered as a significant factor to a necessary effect. Upon experimenting on mice, the authors show that a high fat diet results in decreasing the rhythmicity of serum metabolite, while the dynamics of circadian metabolomics in the liver is different, which confirms “a circadian misalignment” (2812) between the two tissues.
The results are supported by presenting detailed research and properly recording the results. This makes the conclusion reliable and applicable to practices that are used in diagnostics and associated with serum examinations. Serum metabolomics had been viewed as a promising field because it could be used to examine perturbations associated with early biochemical changes; therefore, predictors and markers could be developed that would allow administering appropriate treatment sooner and gaining a better understanding of how diseases affect the human organism on the biochemical level (Zhang et al. 1239). However, Abbondante et al. showed that nutritional challenge can disrupt the circadian rhythm (2825), which is why more critical approaches to serum examination and diagnostics should be developed that would recognize the role of nutrition. Moreover, the authors identified specific serum metabolites that indicate risks of various metabolic disorders and analyzed them from the proposed perspective of different effects of nutritional challenge across different tissues. The role of nutrition was previously recognized (Zhang et al. 1240), but the difference between effects on the serum and liver had not been properly addressed. The results of the addressed study are valid and beneficial in terms of improving clinical practices.
Works Cited
Abbondante, Serena, et al. “Comparative Circadian Metabolomics Reveal Differential Effects of Nutritional Challenge in the Serum and Liver.” Journal of Biological Chemistry, vol. 291, no. 6, 2016, pp. 2812-2828.
Zhang, Aihua, et al. “Serum Metabolomics as a Novel Diagnostic Approach for Disease: A Systematic Review.” Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, vol. 404, no. 4, 2012, pp. 1239-1245.