Lipidomics: a new asset to the clinical lipidology tool-kit.

Human plasma contains a vast number of different lipid species, with estimates ranging from a few thousand to up to 200,000 lipid species. Assuming that these numerous distinct lipid species also have defined roles in the maintenance of cellular functions of the human body, it has become obvious that detailed lipidomic analyses will reveal information that will stretch beyond the knowledge obtained with the current routine clinical lipidology tools. To this end, the evaluated paper describes mass spectrometry-based lipidomic tools developed by the LIPID Metabolites And Pathways Strategy (MAPS) Consortium for systematic identiication and quantiication of the human plasma lipidome. As a result of this undertaking, the authors present plasma concentrations for more than 500 different lipid species among six main lipid categories including fatty acyls, glycerolipids, glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids, sterols and prenols, in pooled human plasma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]