Metabonomics by proton nuclear magnetic resonance in human pleural effusions: A route to discriminate between benign and malignant pleural effusions and to target small molecules as potential cancer biomarkers.

Cytopathology is a noninvasive and cost-effective method for detecting cancer cells in pleural effusions (PEs), although in many cases, the diagnostic performance is hindered by the paucity of significant cells or the lack of clear morphological criteria. This study presents the results of an omics approach to improving the diagnostic performance of PE cytology. Metabolic profiling with proton nuclear magnetic resonance ( Subject to validation in further larger studies,