Preface

Biomarkers, whether measured in peripheral fluids (blood, serum or urine) may improve our knowledge of the pathophysiology of many diseases. Moreover, and most importantly, biomarkers could help in the assessment of diagnosis, prognosis and surviving. The aim of this book was to summarize published data about new emerging and classic biomarkers studied in prevalent diseases, with focus on data from clinical trials and large community based cohorts.

The use of biomarkers has become a fundamental practice in medicine, involving significantly greater scope of laboratory medicine. Biomarkers are measurable characteristics of an organism reflecting a particular physiological state. In medicine, biomarkers considered as compounds isolated from serum, urine, or other fluids, can be used as indicators of the presence or severity of a particular disease state.

Biomarkers can take many different forms including particular proteins or peptides, antibodies, cell types, metabolites, hormones, enzyme levels, compounds related to genomics, etc. A biomarker can also be a substance introduced into a patient to assess the internal organ systems role/function. Moreover, biomarkers facilitate the adaptation of treatment to the specific needs of each patient, which is known as personalized medicine. In this way, using biomarkers to monitor a patient's reaction to a particular drug, it is possible to determine whether a treatment is effective for an individual or has to be changed due to toxic adverse effects. Also, this aspect could lead to their convenient use in terms of cost-efficiency. Biomarkers are also important to manage new disease therapies through the use of biomarkers of progression to delineate the development and course of a disease, thus focusing on the risk or progression of a disease or with the susceptibility of a disease to a given treatment.

Nowadays, the way to diagnose general pathologies and diseases has changed importantly due to the development of high throughput technologies, such as microarrays or large-scale studies of proteins (proteomics, genomics, metabolomics etc). These investigations have allowed the discovery of new biomarkers of diseases. Also, the use of established biomarkers to other aspects in the progression of diseases, as the inclusion of biomarkers in many stratification schemes of severity to stratify the risk in patient’s state.

A single biomarker is often inconclusive or ambiguous because diseases with very different pathophysiological mechanisms can affect the same molecule or marker. Therefore, it is crucial to study and manage patterns of biomarkers with respect to disease state, prognosis and treatment. This complex scenario is the main focus of this book. We tried to summarize, relating to principal groups of pathologies with respect to blood biomarkers, a compilation of the present and upcoming knowledge about biomarkers and diseases. The chapters cover a wide number of areas including those in which biomarkers could mainly add clear information about the illness. This book includes, reviews about sepsis, nutrition, liver state, cancer, cardiology, bone metabolism, etc. The chapters are written by experts and specialists in general laboratory medicine.