A Multi-Omics Study Reveals Pathway-Level Insights and Predictive Biomarkers in pediatric TB

Area of Science:

• Multi-omics analysis in infectious diseases
• Pediatric diagnostics and biomarker discovery
• Immunology and metabolic pathway analysis

Background:

• Tuberculosis (TB) poses a significant global health challenge, particularly affecting over a million children annually.
• Diagnostic difficulties hinder timely treatment for pediatric TB cases.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a multi-omics analysis integrating plasma proteomics and metabolomics for pediatric TB.
• To discover diagnostic biomarkers and compare multi-omics signatures with single-omics approaches.

Main Methods:

• Integrated plasma proteomics and metabolomics data from children with presumptive TB.
• Utilized multiGSEA for pathway enrichment analysis to identify immune and metabolic pathways.
• Applied mixOmics and multiview methods for biomarker discovery and performance comparison.

Main Results:

• Data integration uniquely identified pathways like PTEN/RUNX2 regulation and arginine/proline metabolism.
• Proteomics alone demonstrated superior performance in classifying Confirmed TB versus Unlikely TB in children compared to metabolomics.
• Multi-omics models showed marginal improvement over single-omics models in diagnostic accuracy.

Conclusions:

• Combining complementary molecular data layers enhances understanding of pediatric TB disease mechanisms.
• Proteomics holds significant potential for improving the accuracy of pediatric TB diagnosis.