Gene behavior distinguishes viral from bacterial infections

Coughs, fevers and green mucus can accompany an infection, but most of the time, doctors can only guess whether the culprit is bacterial or viral. A new study points out a way to identify the perp. An infection changes the behavior of the afflicted person’s genes, and that host response differs depending on whether bacteria or a virus is doing the damage, scientists report in the Dec. 15 Immunity. This virus-bacteria distinction could ultimately help doctors quickly figure out what ails a person, and whether antibiotics, antiviral drugs or just chicken soup and sleep is the best treatment. To find the viral fingerprints, computational immunologist Purvesh Khatri of Stanford University and colleagues combed through a wide variety of publicly available datasets that included information about how human genes behaved after an infection of influenza, human rhinovirus and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. The researchers churned these diverse datasets through a series of sophisticated mathematical analyses,...