Serious Bacterial Infection Biomarkers Uncovered using Transcriptomic Analysis

Overview:

High throughput technologies offer insight into disease processes and heightens opportunities for improved diagnostics. Using transcriptomic analyses, we aimed to discover and to evaluate the clinical validity of a combination of reliable and functionally important biomarkers of serious bacterial infection (SBI).

We identified three previously reported biomarkers of infection (neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), granulysin and resistin) and measured gene expression using quantitative real-time PCR. Protein products related to the three transcripts were measured by immunoassays.

Relative gene expression values of NGAL and resistin were significantly increased, and expression of granulysin significantly decreased in cases compared to controls. Plasma concentrations of NGAL and resistin were significantly increased in children with confirmed SBI compared to children with no detectable bacterial infection (NBI), and to controls (287 versus 128 versus 62 ng/ml and 195 versus 90 versus 18 ng/ml, respectively, p < 0.05). Plasma protein concentrations of NGAL and resistin were significantly increased in non-survivors compared to survivors (306 versus 211 and 214 versus 150 ng/ml, p = 0.02). The respective areas under the curve (AUC) for NGAL, resistin and procalcitonin in predicting SBI were 0.79, 0.80 and 0.86, whilst a combination of NGAL, resistin and procalcitonin achieved an AUC of 0.90.

This article was published online in BMC Medical Genomics and is free to access.