Abstract

Diabetes represents one of the most important global health problems because it is associated with a large economic burden for the health systems of many countries. Whereas the diagnosis and treatment of manifest diabetes have been well investigated, the identification of novel pathways or early biomarkers indicative of metabolic alterations or insulin resistance related to the development of diabetes is still in progress. Over half of the type 2 diabetes patients show manifestations of diabetes-related diseases, which highlights the need for early screening markers of diabetes. During the last decade, the rapidly growing research field of metabolomics has introduced new insights into the pathology of diabetes as well as methods to predict disease onset and revealed new biomarker. A recent epidemiological studies firstly used metabolism to predict incident diabetes and revealed branched-chain and aromatic amino acids including isoleucine, leucine, valine, tyrosine and phenylalanine as highly-significant predictors of future diabetes. This review summarizes the current findings of metabolic research in animal models and human investigations.