Recommended Citation
Jaffe IS, Jaehne AK, Quackenbush E, Ko ER, Rivers EP, McClain MT, Ginsburg GS, Woods CW, and Tsalik EL. Comparing the Diagnostic Accuracy of Clinician Judgment to a Novel Host Response Diagnostic for Acute Respiratory Illness. Open Forum Infect Dis 2021; 8(12):ofab564.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2021
Publication Title
Open Forum Infect Dis
Abstract
Background: Difficulty discriminating bacterial from viral infections drives antibacterial misuse. Host gene expression tests discriminate bacterial and viral etiologies, but their clinical utility has not been evaluated.
Methods: Host gene expression and procalcitonin levels were measured in 582 emergency department participants with suspected infection. We also recorded clinician diagnosis and clinician-recommended treatment. These 4 diagnostic strategies were compared with clinical adjudication as the reference. To estimate the clinical impact of host gene expression, we calculated the change in overall Net Benefit (∆NB; the difference in Net Benefit comparing 1 diagnostic strategy with a reference) across a range of prevalence estimates while factoring in the clinical significance of false-positive and -negative errors.
Results: Gene expression correctly classified bacterial, viral, or noninfectious illness in 74.1% of subjects, similar to the other strategies. Clinical diagnosis and clinician-recommended treatment revealed a bias toward overdiagnosis of bacterial infection resulting in high sensitivity (92.6% and 94.5%, respectively) but poor specificity (67.2% and 58.8%, respectively), resulting in a 33.3% rate of inappropriate antibacterial use. Gene expression offered a more balanced sensitivity (79.0%) and specificity (80.7%), which corresponded to a statistically significant improvement in average weighted accuracy (79.9% vs 71.5% for procalcitonin and 76.3% for clinician-recommended treatment; P<.0001 for both). Consequently, host gene expression had greater Net Benefit in diagnosing bacterial infection than clinician-recommended treatment (∆NB=6.4%) and procalcitonin (∆NB=17.4%).
Conclusions: Host gene expression-based tests to distinguish bacterial and viral infection can facilitate appropriate treatment, improving patient outcomes and mitigating the antibacterial resistance crisis.
PubMed ID
34888402
Volume
8
Issue
12
First Page
564
Last Page
564
