Take epilepsy, for instance. It is well-established that a low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet (KD) can help treat refractory epilepsy, which affects more than a third of epileptic patients who don’t respond to existing anticonvulsive drugs. What scientists haven’t understood until recently is how this kind of diet translates to brain activity. The answer for this aspect of epilepsy lies in the gut microbiome. There are many other neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, Parkinson’s disease and more. While so much remains to be understood about brain science, we do know that metabolomics is uniquely poised to understand the brain because of the ability of metabolites, small molecules, to cross the blood-brain barrier providing unique insights.

Mounting evidence has shown the power of implementing a multi-omic approach to understanding difficult questions. In the area of neuroscience this also reigns true. We know that combining global metabolomics with gene sequencing to identify pathways and genes has pinpointed new understanding of common-to-rare disease variants.¹

Biomarker identification via global metabolomics in neuroscience can help to highlight the connection between microbiome, metabolism and disease as well as open the door to new therapies.

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28263315/#affiliation-1