Host gene expression profiling of fungal (candidemia), bacterial, and viral infection, and non-infectious illness [validation cohort]

Improved diagnostics are necessary to differentiate between multipe potential etiologies of acute illness in a hospitalized patient. The peripheral blood host gene expression response can act as a supplementary diagnostic tool and better inform the full host immune response to a pathogen. We performed RNA sequencing on peripheral blood from 48 hospitalized patients with confirmed candidemia as well as patients with other acute viral, bacterial, and non-infectious illnesses and derived pathogen class-specific gene expression classifiers. Overall design: 199 subjects were included in this analysis, including those with candidemia, bacterial and viral infection, noninfectious illness, and healthy controls. Samples were collected at enrollment for all samples. Additional serial samples were collected for candidemic subjects. Total RNA was extracted from human blood by PAXgene and RNA sequencing was performed.