Current management of patients presenting with fever is problematic due to the difficulty in identifying the relatively small number of patients with severe and life-threatening bacterial infections or inflammatory diseases amongst the more common self-limited viral illnesses. The current approach, based on exclusion of bacterial infection using microbiological cultures, presumptive treatment with antibiotics while results are awaited, and consideration of inflammatory conditions only after infection has been treated or excluded, results in delayed and incorrect diagnosis, excessive use of hospital beds and resources during prolonged periods of investigation, and inappropriate administration of antibiotics, contributing to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance.
We propose a new Personalised Medicine approach to diagnosis of infectious and inflammatory diseases, based on individual RNA signatures detected in blood and will demonstrate the benefit of this approach to individuals and healthcare systems and its economic viability. The study is mainly focused on the pediatric population, but because we aim to also use the newly developed test to diagnose adults and because febrile illness in children often has a different etiology than in adults, we will include children as well as adults.