Research areas

Nightingale Health’s biomarker analysis platform has helped researchers from diverse fields to identify new associations, predict diseases, and enhance gene discoveries. Explore what Nightingale Health's analysis can do for you in your field of research.

Cardiovascular diseases

Nightingale Health’s blood panel has been used by numerous CVD researchers globally. By providing comprehensive coverage of detailed lipid measures and metabolites, our platform is a powerful tool for studies focusing on disease prediction and risk model development, disease etiology, drug development, translation, and combining genomics data with metabolic data. For example, studies have characterized biomarker differences for common types of CVD and clarified the molecular effects of known and novel lipid-lowering drugs.

Our biomarkers include an advanced lipid panel with 14 lipoprotein subclasses, fatty acids, inflammation marker–GlycA along with other key CVD biomarkers, clinically validated biomarkers for fast translation (like omega-3, ApoA1, and ApoB), and numerous emerging markers such as ketones and amino acids.

Diabetes

Nightingale’s blood and urine biomarker panels are versatile tools for diabetes research. Our blood panel has been used in numerous publications on type 1 and type 2 diabetes and their complications and underlying risk factors. These studies include the early metabolic dysregulation associated with adiposity, insulin resistance, and the spectrum of hyperglycemia. Other studies have focused on predicting type 2 diabetes risk among various ethnic groups and molecular characterization of genes for predisposition to diabetes.

The blood and urine panels include amino acids and glycolysis-related metabolites to compare the function on both sides of the kidney easily. In addition, our blood panel also provides inflammation marker GlycA, an advanced lipid panel with 14 lipoprotein subclasses and clinically validated biomarkers for fast translation. The urine panel has been used to identify novel biomarkers for the progression of diabetic kidney disease.

Genomics

Nightingale's technology is ideal for genomics research since it has excellent scalability and comprehensive coverage of metabolic pathways. The technology provides established biomarkers for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. Additionally, we deliver results for emerging biomarkers that enable discoveries in fields like neurological diseases and gut research.

Our technology has various possible applications in genomics research, including genome-wide association studies (GWAS) at the biobank scale and complementing sequencing data with Nightingale's metabolomics biomarkers to facilitate genetic discoveries. The technology is also suitable for assessing the causality of biomarkers in disease development and can contribute to improving clinical success rates in drug development.

Aging

Nightingale Health’s metabolomics data has been used in several studies to identify the connection between metabolic health and aging. For instance, our blood panel has been used to identify the impact of lifestyle choices on metabolic health and age in older populations. The platform is also suitable for studies focusing on distinct research areas such as menopause and dementia.

Our blood panel includes amino acids and a comprehensive lipid profile providing insights into the changing metabolism and its effect on aging. Our CSF panel consists of several small molecular weight metabolites that overlap with our blood panel, enabling easy comparison between the two circulating systems.

Immunity and COVID-19

Nightingale Health’s blood panel includes many biomarkers relating to the body’s immune system. These include established markers of chronic inflammation, such as GlycA, and novel metabolic biomarkers strongly reflecting susceptibility to infectious diseases, including severe COVID-19. The biomarkers capture aging processes and overall frailty, but the changes in the biomarkers are already visible in population studies of generally healthy people. Even stronger results are observed in patients with prevalent disease – for example, the same biomarkers can strongly stratify COVID-19 severity in hospital settings.

Nutrition

Nightingale Health’s metabolic profiling is an excellent tool for various studies, such as post-prandial studies and interventions searching for links between dietary intake and health outcomes. This insight into metabolite-level changes enhances understanding of why certain foods or nutrients are associated with diseases in epidemiological studies.

Nightingale’s blood panel covers a vast range of metabolites, such as the detailed lipid subclasses, amino acids, fatty acids, and inflammatory markers that respond to changes in dietary intake. Our novel urine platform includes several metabolites that may prove useful as biomarkers of food and nutrient intake, such as proline betaine (fruit and vegetables), TMAO (meat), and sucrose (sugar).

Gut research

Nightingale Health’s metabolic profiling provides a broad overview of the host’s systemic metabolism. This enables exploring new connections between gut microbes, nutrition, and different areas of health and can help to understand the function of gut microbial species. Our platform has been used in published research on gut microbial associations in metabolic syndrome, CVD, and pregnancy as well as for studying disease progression for inflammatory bowel disease.

In addition, to covering the major biological pathways, our blood and urine analysis also includes biomarkers that are of special interest to gut research; acetate and inflammation biomarker from blood like GlycA, as well as TMAO, dimethylamine, and lactate from urine.


Ready to place an order?

Use our online order form.
If you have questions, you can contact us here.