Association of RNA Biosignatures With Bacterial Infections in Febrile Infants Aged 60 Days or Younger
Mahajan P, Kuppermann N, Mejias A, Suarez N, Chaussabel D, Casper TC, Smith B, Alpern ER, Anders J, Atabaki SM, Bennett JE, Blumberg S, Bonsu B, Borgialli D, Brayer A, Browne L, Cohen DM, Crain EF, Cruz AT, Dayan PS, Gattu R, Greenberg R, Hoyle JD Jr, Jaffe DM, Levine DA, Lillis K, Linakis JG, Muenzer J, Nigrovic LE, Powell EC, Rogers AJ, Roosevelt G, Ruddy RM, Saunders M, Tunik MG, Tzimenatos L, Vitale M, Dean JM, Ramilo O; Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN)
The Bottom Line
RNA biosignatures have the potential to help us distinguish which febrile infants under 60 days have serious bacterial infection
What They Did
- The authors collected RNA biosignatures from 279 randomly selected infants out of a pool of 1883 total patients
- They identified 66 genes that helped distinguish SBI vs not – with a sensitivity of 87% (95% CI, 73%-95%) and a specificity of 89% (95% CI, 81%-93%)
- Ten “classifier” genes distinguished infants with bacteremia from those without bacterial infections 94% (95% CI, 70%-100%) sensitivity and 95% (95% CI, 88%-98%) specificity
What You Can Do
- Know that this is an emerging area of research – Obviously these arrays are technically complex and not widely available… yet.
- Cultures are still the gold standard for identifying SBI – and with blood culture false positive rates as high as 10% in some reports new methods that are easier to obtain and are more accurate hold promise
