The host response to infection: advancing a novel diagnostic paradigm
1 Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, 101 Science Drive, Duke University, Durham, NC 27710, USA
2 Infectious Diseases Section, Service 113, Durham VA Medical Center, Durham, NC 27705, USA
Critical Care 2012, 16:168 doi:10.1186/cc11685
See related research by Parnell et al., http://ccforum.com/content/16/4/R157
Published: 6 November 2012Abstract
Capturing the host response by using genomic technologies such as transcriptional profiling provides a new paradigm for classifying and diagnosing infectious disease and for potentially distinguishing infection from other causes of serious respiratory illness. This strategy has been used to define a blood-based RNA signature as a classifier for pandemic H1N1 influenza infection that is distinct from bacterial pneumonia and other inflammatory causes of respiratory disease. To realize the full potential of this approach as a diagnostic test will require additional independent validation of the results and studies to examine the specificity of this signature for viral versus bacterial infection or co-infection.
