Markers of disease: identifying bacterial secondary infections in Covid-19 patients

The current COVID pandemic has led to an urgent need to better understand how and why certain patients become seriously ill or die. Secondary bacterial infections are a major contributing factor in a proportion of these more serious cases. Using our established methods to study bacterial sepsis, we want to analyse COVID+ patients and perform metabolomics (systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind) to measure key markers we know are associated with bacterial infection. The result: more accurate and appropriate diagnosis and allocation of anti-bacterial treatment. We will select the most common examples of Gram positive and Gram negative organisms associated with secondary infections for detailed analysis.