Multi-omics profiling links IL10 to immune dysfunction and fatal outcomes in paediatric sepsis among African children
Sepsis is a major cause of childhood mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite hospital admission and supportive care, mortality among young children with severe infection remains high. The biological mechanisms underlying poor outcomes in these settings are incompletely understood. This project contains raw RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data generated from the discovery cohort of a multi-omic study investigating host immune responses associated with mortality in paediatric sepsis. The discovery cohort comprises 41 children aged 1-24 months admitted with life-threatening acute infection to Kilifi County Hospital, Kenya. Of these, 19 died during hospitalisation and 22 survived to discharge. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated at admission and cryopreserved prior to RNA extraction. Total RNA was extracted using the Qiagen RNeasy Mini Kit. RNA integrity was assessed using the Agilent 2200 TapeStation, and RNA input was normalized to 190 ng per sample. Strand-specific poly-A selected mRNA libraries were prepared using the NEBNext Ultra II mRNA kit (New England Biolabs). Libraries were amplified using 15 PCR cycles with unique dual indexing primers. Paired-end sequencing (2 x 75 bp) was performed on the Illumina HiSeq 4000 platform using 150-cycle SBS chemistry, generating a minimum of approximately 19.7 million reads per sample.