Table 3.

Advantage, limitations, and the future of metabolomics in prenatal medicine.

Metabolomics in prenatal medicine
Advantages	Limitations and future directions
Evaluates several biomarkers in a single experiment	Possible over-interpretation of data
Rapid experimental turnaround and relatively low cost	High false discovery rates requiring expert analysis
Does not require a-priori hypotheses of specific metabolites	Proof of initial findings in cell line and animal models often lags initial reports
Can identify altered metabolic pathways from multiple metabolite analysis	Hypothesis generating approach, but cutoff values and normal ranges must be established for clinical studies
May permit earlier identification of fetal or pregnancy disorders	Collaboration is weak among clinicians, analytical chemists, and biotechnologists
Simultaneously analyze metabolome of several compartments (e.g., maternal, placental, fetal)	Simple, specific tests that do not use sophisticated equipment may need to be developed