RNAseq data of blood samples from hospitalized children with viral and bacterial pneumonia used to validate the novel 5-transcript signature that differentiates bacterial from viral pneumonia

Pneumonia remains the leading cause of death in children under five, but existing diagnostic methods frequently lead to either insufficient or excessive treatments. Our study aims to bridge this gap by identifying host transcriptomic biomarkers in the blood of children with confirmed viral or bacterial pneumonia. Using RNA sequencing, we identified and validated in an independent cohort a 5-transcript signature that accurately differentiates bacterial from viral pneumonia. This signature has considerable potential to improve diagnostic accuracy for pediatric pneumonia, minimizing delays in diagnosis and avoiding unnecessary treatments, with the possibility of significantly impacting clinical practice. a strand specific library preparation was completed using NEBNext® Ultra™ II mRNA kit (NEB) and NEB rRNA/globin depletion probes following manufacturer’s recommendations. Individual libraries were normalized using Qubit, pooled together and diluted. The sequencing was performed using a 150 paired-end configuration in a Novaseq6000 platform. Quality control of raw data was carried out using FastQC, alignment and read counting were performed using STAR, alignment filtering was done with SAMtools and read counting was carried out using FeatureCounts. RNAseq data was processed for batch correction using control samples and COMBAT-Seq package.