Figure 1.

Potential metabolism biomarkers in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Metabolic alterations in ALS offer opportunities to use metabolism biomarkers for the diagnosis, categorization, and tracking of disease. Non-invasive anthropometric measures include body weight, body mass index (BMI), fat free mass, fat mass, and fat distribution. Invasive measures include the use of F18-PET to assess glucose metabolism in the central nervous system, or require the sampling of saliva, blood, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), muscle tissue, and urine. Although few independent markers are specific, reproducible or able to track disease in ALS, used together with complementary biomarkers (including neurophysiology and imaging), these markers may provide deeper insights into metabolic perturbations that are potentially involved in the onset and progression of disease.