Fig 1. Overview schematic.

Gene expression data from 48 bacterial (B), 54 viral (V), and 49 noninfectious (N) microbiologically confirmed cases were used to train classifiers capable of distinguishing between bacterial, viral, and noninfectious causes of illness. Specifically, the model created 3 separate classifiers: bacterial versus non-bacterial, viral versus non-viral, and infectious versus non-infectious. The fixed-weight classifiers were then applied to a cohort of patients with acute asthma exacerbations of various etiologies to predict the underlying trigger of the exacerbation.