Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders: Autoinflammatory Disorders

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1642923

This article is part of the Research TopicBiomarkers and Beyond: Predicting Course and Tailoring Treatment in Inflammatory Bowel DiseasesView all 18 articles

A two-transcript classifier model of host genes for discrimination of bacterial from viral infection in ulcerative colitis with opportunistic infections: A discovery and validation study

Provisionally accepted
Huipeng ZhangHuipeng Zhang1Nannan XuNannan Xu2Ahemala DuishanbaiAhemala Duishanbai1Gang HuangGang Huang3Jing ZhangJing Zhang1Guanwei BiGuanwei Bi1Manyu LiManyu Li1Gang WangGang Wang2Yanbo YuYanbo Yu1*
  • 1Department of Gastroenterology, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China
  • 2Department of Infectious Disease, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China
  • 3Gastroenterology, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University Qingdao, Qingdao, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

Aims We aimed to develop and validate a classifier model to discriminate bacterial from viral infection in ulcerative colitis with opportunistic infections (UC-OI) by evaluating potential transcript signature in peripheral blood. Methods The study comprised UC patients with bacterial or viral infection or without opportunistic infections. We screened for differentially expressed genes associated with bacterial or viral infections (IFI44L, PI3 and ITGB2) and compared the expression levels of the genes in different infection subgroups. Subsequently, UC patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to either the discovery or validation groups. We developed a binary logistic regression model integrating the expression of candidate genes using discovery group and evaluated its discriminatory performance in validation group. Results The expression levels of candidate genes differed significantly among infection subgroups. The IFI44L and PI3 combination was the most discriminatory and was used to construct the model. The two-transcript classifier model had an AUC of 0.867 (95% CI 0.794-0.941) to discriminate bacterial and viral infections in the validation group. Its performance was better than that of PCT, CRP and ESR and was less affected by pathogen type. Conclusions IFI44L and PI3 transcript levels are robust classifiers to discriminate bacterial from viral infection in UC-OI, and measuring its levels appears to be predictive infection progression and treatment outcome in UC patients over time.

Keywords: IFI44L, PI3, Opportunistic Infections, ulcerative colitis, Bacterial infection, viral infection

Received: 07 Jun 2025; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Xu, Duishanbai, Huang, Zhang, Bi, Li, Wang and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yanbo Yu, Department of Gastroenterology, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material