Title
Evidence Generation for a Host-Response Biosignature of Respiratory Disease
Authors
[ 1 ] Instytut Informatyki, Wydział Informatyki i Telekomunikacji, Politechnika Poznańska | [ P ] employee
Scientific discipline (Law 2.0)
Year of publication
2025
Article type
scientific article
Publication language
english
Keywords
EN
- host-response
- vibroacoustics biosignature
- inaudible vibrations and audible sound
- infrasonic
- tensegrity
- mechanotransduction
Abstract
EN Background: In just twenty years, three dangerous human coronaviruses—SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 have exposed critical gaps in early detection of emerging viral threats. Current diagnostics remain pathogen-focused, often missing the earliest phase of infection. A virus-agnostic, host-based diagnostic capable of detecting responses to viral intrusion is urgently needed. Methods: We hypothesized that the lungs act as biomechanical instruments, with infection altering tissue tension, wave propagation, and flow dynamics in ways detectable through subaudible vibroacoustic signals. In a matched case–control study, we enrolled 19 RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 inpatients and 16 matched controls across two Johns Hopkins hospitals. Multimodal data were collected, including passive vibroacoustic auscultation, lung ultrasound, peak expiratory flow, and laboratory markers. Machine learning models were trained to identify host-response biosignatures from anterior chest recordings. Results: 19 COVID-19 inpatients and 16 matched controls (mean BMI 32.4 kg/m2, mean age 48.6 years) were successfully enrolled to the study. The top-performing, unoptimized, vibroacoustic-only model achieved an AUC of 0.84 (95% CI: 0.67–0.92). The host-covariate optimized model achieved an AUC of 1.0 (95% CI: 0.94–1.0), with 100% sensitivity (95% CI: 82–100%) and 99.6% specificity (95% CI: 85–100%). Vibroacoustic data from the anterior chest alone reliably distinguished COVID-19 cases from controls. Conclusions: This proof-of-concept study demonstrates that passive, noninvasive vibroacoustic biosignatures can detect host response to viral infection in a hospitalized population and supports further testing of this modality in broader populations. These findings support the development of scalable, host-based diagnostics to enable early, agnostic detection of future pandemic threats (ClinicalTrials.gov number: NCT04556149).
Date of online publication
02.07.2025
Pages (from - to)
943-1 - 943-16
Comments
Article Number: 943
License type
CC BY (attribution alone)
Open Access Mode
open journal
Open Access Text Version
final published version
Date of Open Access to the publication
at the time of publication
Ministry points / journal
100
Impact Factor
3,5 [List 2024]
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