Vibration spectroscopy and body biofluids: Literature review for clinical applications

Vibrational spectroscopy techniques such as Raman and IR (infrared) allow real-time, non-invasive and non-destructive analysis of organic compounds with a good limit-of-detection. This review aims to show the progress of clinical diagnosis and prognosis due to advances of vibrational spectroscopy techniques in biofluids through an extensive literature review. This review was performed by searching for studies using the keywords “biofluids or biological fluids” and “diagnostic techniques” in PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar. We found 580 articles in the 1990s, 1171 articles in the 2000s and 1688 in the years from 2011. Also, a second search including “biofluids or biological fluids” and “vibrational spectroscopy” returned only one article in the 1990s, three papers in the 2000s and 18 in the years from 2011.This growth suggests a great potential of biofluid research using vibrational spectroscopy. Sample collection variations(quantity and contaminations due to contact with other body parts and their secretions) are important factors that influence sample composition. Once these factors are taken into account, spectroscopic analysis may provide the necessary information to identify a disease, lesion, tumor or infection. With the present review we aim to encourage the study of vibrational spectroscopy techniques for analysis of biofluids focusing in clinical applications. In the future, it will widely benefit clinicians, allowing new diagnostic approaches, and for patients to have early diagnosis for most every disease.