Recent Advances and Challenges in Steroid Metabolomics for Biomarker Discovery.

Steroid hormones belong to a group of low-molecular-weight compounds which are responsible for maintenance of various body functions, thus, their accurate assessment is crucial for evaluation of biosynthetic defects. The development of reliable methods allowing disease diagnosis is essential to improve early detection of various disorders connected with altered steroidogenesis. Currently, the field of metabolomics offers several improvements in terms of sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic methods when opposed to classical diagnostic approaches. The combination of hyphenated techniques and pattern recognition methods allows to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the slightest alterations in steroid metabolic pathways. Moreover, metabolomics can also provide insights concerning personalized treatment of endocrine disorders in terms of supplying information about the response of the patient to treatment. In spite of several advantages, steroid metabolomics still faces some challenges which affect its availability and potential as a more widespread tool for biomarker discovery. This review will present the strengths, challenges and recent developments in steroid based metabolomics taking into consideration its potential in the area of clinical biomarkers discovery.