Towards Improving Point-of-Care Diagnosis of Non-malaria Febrile Illness: A Metabolomics Approach

Abstract

Introduction: Non-malaria febrile illnesses such as bacterial bloodstream infections (BSI) are a leading cause of disease and mortality in the tropics. However, there are no reliable, simple diagnostic tests for identifying BSI or other severe non-malaria febrile illnesses. We hypothesized that different infectious agents responsible for severe febrile illness would impact on the host metabololome in different ways, and investigated the potential of plasma metabolites for diagnosis of non-malaria febrile illness. Methodology: We conducted a comprehensive mass-spectrometry based metabolomics analysis of the plasma of 61 children with severe febrile illness from a malaria-endemic rural African..