Inflammatory response biomarkers: promising indicators for distinguishing pathogen in severe infection

Severe infection and sepsis are the main causes of mortality in pediatric intensive care units(PICU). Severe infection in critically illness is characterized by acute onset, rapid progression, associated with multiple organs dysfunction, and several pathogens involved.It is critical to distinguish the main pathogen as soon as possible for clinical decision-making.Up to date, precision diagnosis and individualized strategy attract more attention in the field of critical care medicine.The improvements of molecular biology, the combination of multi-omics, and metagenomics sequencing, etc may yield many new insights into precision diagnosis of etiology.Inflammatory response biomarkers are defined as conventional inflammatory factor, acute phase protein(APP), blood RNA biosignature, metabolic molecules, immune cell markers and so on, which are promising indicators for identification of pathogenic microorganisms in severe infection. Key words: Infection; Inflammatory response; Biomarker; Pathogen