Observational studyThe Lancet. Microbe2021
Discovery and validation of a three-gene signature to distinguish COVID-19 and other viral infections in emergency infectious disease presentations: a case-control and observational cohort study.
Observational study in The Lancet. Microbe, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evaluating the InSignia IFI27 expression assay for detecting viral respiratory infection compared to a traditional gene normalisation assay.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Interferon-Stimulated Genes and Immune Metabolites as Broad-Spectrum Biomarkers for Viral Infections.Viruses · 2025Review
- Dynamic Gene Attention Focus (DyGAF): Enhancing Biomarker Identification Through Dual-Model Attention Networks.Bioinformatics and biology insights · 2025Article
- SARS-CoV-2 human challenge reveals biomarkers that discriminate early and late phases of respiratory viral infections.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Protein and transcriptional biomarker profiling may inform treatment strategies in lower respiratory tract infections by indicating bacterial-viral differentiation.Microbiology spectrum · 2024Article
- Integration and validation of host transcript signatures, including a novel 3-transcript tuberculosis signature, to enable one-step multiclass diagnosis of childhood febrile disease.Journal of translational medicine · 2024Article
- Rapid, Portable, and Electricity-free Sample Extraction Method for Enhanced Molecular Diagnostics in Resource-Limited Settings.Analytical chemistry · 2024Article
- A computational framework to improve cross-platform implementation of transcriptomics signatures.EBioMedicine · 2024Review
- A T-Cell-Derived 3-Gene Signature Distinguishes SARS-CoV-2 from Common Respiratory Viruses.Viruses · 2024Article
- Deep learning model to discriminate diverse infection types based on pairwise analysis of host gene expression.iScience · 2024Article
- Whole-Blood Gene Expression Profile After Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Diagnosis of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children by a Whole-Blood Transcriptional Signature.Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society · 2023Article
- Managing Viral Emerging Infectious Diseases via Current and Future Molecular Diagnostics.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Blood RNA alternative splicing events as diagnostic biomarkers for infectious disease.Cell reports methods · 2023Article
- Virus-specific and shared gene expression signatures in immune cells after vaccination in response to influenza and vaccinia stimulation.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Toward a more generalizable blood RNA signature for bacterial and viral infections.Cell reports. Medicine · 2022Article
- Characterisation of the blood RNA host response underpinning severity in COVID-19 patients.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Antiviral metabolite 3'-deoxy-3',4'-didehydro-cytidine is detectable in serum and identifies acute viral infections including COVID-19.Med (New York, N.Y.) · 2022Article
- Systematic comparison of published host gene expression signatures for bacterial/viral discrimination.Genome medicine · 2022Article
- Implications of Using Host Response-Based Molecular Diagnostics on the Management of Bacterial and Viral Infections: A Review.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
24 authors at 6 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEmergency admissions for infection often lack initial diagnostic certainty. COVID-19 has highlighted a need for novel diagnostic approaches to indicate likelihood of viral infection in a pandemic setting. We aimed to derive and validate a blood transcriptional signature to detect viral infections, including COVID-19, among adults with suspected infection who presented to the emergency department.
methodsIndividuals (aged ≥18 years) presenting with suspected infection to an emergency department at a major teaching hospital in the UK were prospectively recruited as part of the Bioresource in Adult Infectious Diseases (BioAID) discovery cohort. Whole-blood RNA sequencing was done on samples from participants with subsequently confirmed viral, bacterial, or no infection diagnoses. Differentially expressed host genes that met additional filtering criteria were subjected to feature selection to derive the most parsimonious discriminating signature. We validated the signature via RT-qPCR in a prospective validation cohort of participants who presented to an emergency department with undifferentiated fever, and a second case-control validation cohort of emergency department participants with PCR-positive COVID-19 or bacterial infection. We assessed signature performance by calculating the area under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROCs), sensitivities, and specificities.
findingsA three-gene transcript signature, comprising
interpretationThis novel three-gene signature discriminates viral infections, including COVID-19, from other emergency infection presentations in adults, outperforming both leukocyte count and CRP, thus potentially providing substantial clinical utility in managing acute presentations with infection.
fundingNational Institute for Health Research, Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, and EU-FP7.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.