Cytokine and chemokine profiles linked to early severity of scrub typhus: multicenter validation of soluble PD-L1
= 0.082). sPD-L1 demonstrated a significant trend with increasing severity and showed superior performance to conventional markers in distinguishing patients with organ dysfunction. Receiver operating characteristic analysis of sPD-L1 levels at hospital admission confirmed high discriminatory power, with AUCs of 0.997 and 0.981 in the two validation cohorts. This multicenter study identified sPD-L1 as a potential early biomarker for early risk stratification of patients with scrub typhus. IMPORTANCE: , affects over one million people annually in the Asia-Pacific region, with an in-hospital mortality rate of more than 30% among patients with severe disease. Early identification of patients at high risk of progression to multi-organ failure remains a major clinical challenge. Timely risk stratification to identify high-risk patients is essential to prevent poor clinical outcomes. This study identifies soluble programmed death-ligand 1 as a potential early biomarker that distinguishes patients at risk of developing severe disease within the first week of hospitalization.
Authors
- Xiaoyuan Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8233-1143)
- Fahui Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7765-3024)
- Long Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4889-4624)
- Jasper Fuk‐Woo Chan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6336-6657)
- Gaoyu Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6423-2914)
- Chuanning Tang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5413-6470)
- Ruoyan Peng
- Yue Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0098-5359)
- Min Liao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3006-9335)
- Dachuan Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4404-7391)
- Kwok-Yung Yuen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8700-4570)
- H. Pei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5078-3336)
- Nan Ge
- Yongguo Du
- Liyuan Zhang
- Shannan Wu
- Meng Chang
- Wenjun Tian
- Biao Wu
- Feifei Yin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6195-0614)
- Siqi Chen
- Yijia Guo
Institutions
- Queen Mary Hospital (CN)
- All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Plant Quarantine (RU)
- Hainan General Hospital (CN)
- University of Hong Kong - Shenzhen Hospital (CN)
- Hainan Agricultural School (CN)
- Hainan Medical University (CN)
- University of Hong Kong (HK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Clinical Microbiology
- Published
- 2026-04-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1128/jcm.01633-25
- Primary Topic
- Vector-borne infectious diseases
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China