Proteomic Profiling of the Local and Systemic Immune Response to Pediatric Respiratory Viral Infections

Viral lower respiratory tract infection (vLRTI) is a leading cause of hospitalization and death in children worldwide. Despite this, no studies have employed proteomics to characterize host immune responses to severe pediatric vLRTI in both the lower airway and systemic circulation. To address this gap, gain insights into vLRTI pathophysiology, and test a novel diagnostic approach, we assayed 1,305 proteins in tracheal aspirate (TA) and plasma from 62 critically ill children using SomaScan. We performed differential expression (DE) and pathway analyses comparing vLRTI (n=40) to controls with non-infectious acute respiratory failure (n=22), developed a diagnostic classifier using LASSO regression, and analyzed matched TA and plasma samples. We further investigated the impact of viral load and bacterial coinfection on the proteome. The TA signature of vLRTI was characterized by 200 DE proteins (Padj<0.05) with upregulation of interferons and T cell responses and downregulation of inflammation-modulating proteins including FABP and MIP-5. A nine-protein TA classifier achieved an AUC of 0.96 (95% CI 0.90-1.00) for identifying vLRTI. In plasma, the host response to vLRTI was more muted with 56 DE proteins. Correlation between TA and plasma was limited, although ISG15 was elevated in both compartments. In bacterial coinfection, we observed increases in the TNF-stimulated protein TSG-6, as well as CRP, and interferon-related proteins. Viral load correlated positively with interferon signaling and negatively with neutrophil-activation pathways. Taken together, our study provides fresh insight into the lower airway and systemic proteome of severe pediatric vLRTI, and identifies novel protein biomarkers with diagnostic potential.