Critical Trio Exome Benefits In-Time Decision-Making for Pediatric Patients With Severe Illnesses

Objectives: Critical illnesses caused by undiagnosed genetic conditions are challenging in PICUs. Whole-exome sequencing is a powerful diagnostic tool but usually costly and often fail to arrive at a final diagnosis in a short period. We assessed the feasibility of our whole-exome sequencing as a tool to improve the efficacy of rare diseases diagnosis for pediatric patients with severe illness.

Design: Observational analysis.

Method: We employed a fast but standard whole-exome sequencing platform together with text mining-assisted variant prioritization in PICU setting over a 1-year period.

Setting: A tertiary referral Children's Hospital in Taiwan.

Patients: Critically ill PICU patients suspected of having a genetic disease and newborns who were suspected of having a serious genetic disease after newborn screening were enrolled.

Interventions: None.

Measurements And Main Results: Around 50,000 to 100,000 variants were obtained for each of the 40 patients in 5 days after blood sampling. Eleven patients were immediately found be affected by previously reported mutations after searching mutation databases. Another seven patients had a diagnosis among the top five in a list ranked by text mining. As a whole, 21 patients (52.5%) obtained a diagnosis in 6.2 ± 1.1 working days (range, 4.3-9 d). Most of the diagnoses were first recognized in Taiwan. Specific medications were recommended for 10 patients (10/21, 47.6%), transplantation was advised for five, and hospice care was suggested for two patients. Overall, clinical management was altered in time for 81.0% of patients who had a molecular diagnosis.

Conclusions: The current whole-exome sequencing algorithm, balanced in cost and speed, uncovers genetic conditions in infants and children in PICU, which helps their managements in time and promotes better utilization of PICU resources.