Potential of Point-of-Care and At-Home Assessment of Immune Status via Rapid Cytokine Detection and Questionnaire-Based Anamnesis

Abstract

Monitoring the immune system’s status has emerged as an urgent demand in critical health conditions. The circulating cytokine levels in the blood reflect a thorough insight into the immune system status. Indeed, measuring one cytokine may deliver more information equivalent to detecting multiple diseases at a time. However, if the reported cytokine levels are interpreted with considering lifestyle and any comorbid health conditions for the individual, this will promote a more precise assessment of the immune status. Therefore, this study addresses the most recent advanced assays that deliver rapid, accurate measuring of the cytokine levels in human blood, focusing on add-on potentials for point-of-care (PoC) or personal at-home usage, and investigates existing health questionnaires as supportive assessment tools that collect all necessary information for the concrete analysis of the measured cytokine levels. We introduced a ten-dimensional featuring of cytokine measurement assays. We found 15 rapid cytokine assays with assay time less than 1 h; some could operate on unprocessed blood samples, while others are mature commercial products available in the market. In addition, we retrieved several health questionnaires that addressed various health conditions such as chronic diseases and psychological issues. Then, we present a machine learning-based solution to determine what makes the immune system fit. To this end, we discuss how to employ topic modeling for deriving the definition of immune fitness automatically from literature. Finally, we propose a prototype model to assess the fitness of the immune system through leveraging the derived definition of the immune fitness, the cytokine measurements delivered by a rapid PoC immunoassay, and the complementary information collected by the health questionnaire about other health factors. In conclusion, we discovered various advanced rapid cytokine detection technologies that are promising candidates for point-of-care or at-home usage; if paired with a health status questionnaire, the assessment of the immune system status becomes solid and we demonstrated potentials for promoting the assessment tool with data mining techniques.

The Classic Critical Care Conundrum Encounters Precision Medicine*

“…Applied science with oversight from engineering needs to translate laboratory investigations and retrospective database interrogations like that of Klowak et al(6) into tools for real-time clinical decision support in the ICU. Rapid turnaround protein(24) and mRNA(25) quantification methodologies are already realities. Beyond basic scientists unraveling the genetics and molecular biology of critical illness and its treatment, such tools must represent research priorities in order for the field of critical care to embrace the future.Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Seattle Children's Hospital, Harborview Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, School of Medicine, Seattle, WA Dr. Zimmerman's institution received funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Immunexpress; he received funding from Elsevier Publishing.…”

“…Applied science with oversight from engineering needs to translate laboratory investigations and retrospective database interrogations like that of Klowak et al (6) into tools for real-time clinical decision support in the ICU. Rapid turnaround protein (24) and mRNA (25) quantification methodologies are already realities. Beyond basic scientists unraveling the genetics and molecular biology of critical illness and its treatment, such tools must represent research priorities in order for the field of critical care to embrace the future.…”