Leveraging Bioinformatic Strategies to Advance Care of Children With Urinary Tract Infections

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections and pose a significant global health challenge in children. UTIs can cause a range of conditions from cystitis and pyelonephritis to bacteraemia. Current methods for diagnosing UTI lack adequate sensitivity and specificity and are time-consuming, driving demand for improved approaches. Although most UTIs resolve with antibiotic therapy, some children develop recurrent UTIs due to multidrug-resistant organisms and progressive chronic kidney disease. Currently, there are no reliable methods to identify which children are at risk for adverse outcomes, representing a critical gap in paediatric UTI management. This review explores how bioinformatic approaches can offer a comprehensive framework to harness scientific discoveries and meet clinical challenges posed by paediatric UTI. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing and proteomics have generated extensive datasets, enabling detailed analysis of microbial and host responses during UTI. We summarize how computational and multi-omics approaches, including metagenomics, bulk and single-cell transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenetics and integrative frameworks, have deepened our understanding of UTI pathogenesis and the foundational determinants of a successful host response. We consider the collective potential of these discoveries and technologies to transform future UTI management.