Omic approaches to infectious disease testing
A pathogen-based approach to infectious disease diagnosis has long been the gold standard, despite poor sensitivity, specificity, or long time to result with this method. The host response offers a robust and complementary approach to infectious disease diagnosis and prognosis. Utilization of the host response is not a new concept; host biomarkers such as C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate have been in use for over a century. Recent advances in transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic technologies have improved the ability to characterize the host response with finer detail than has ever been possible. These techniques spurred the development of omic-based biosignatures that have demonstrated an impressive ability to diagnose infection and predict disease outcomes. This chapter begins with a brief review of single-analyte protein biomarkers. The review then provides an overview of the techniques that have made omic biomarker discovery possible and concludes by highlighting how omic approaches have identified new biomarker signatures for various infectious disease syndromes. A thorough understanding of the host response to infection offers the potential to detect and identify infection early in disease, guide antibiotic therapy, and predict clinical outcomes.
