Dear Aniruddha Ghosh

Conclusions from some papers are in line with your question.

Article An emerging role for the anti-inflammatory cytokine interleu...

Useful for your research could be some definitions related to pharmacodynamic biomarkers. In general concept is common. Please remember that biomarker ( for example '"pharmacodynamic marker") that can be validated must meet some criteria like:

(1)sensitive enough to detect small differences,

(2)measurable with sufficient precision

(3)clinically relevant for the target population.

Please check in EMA document http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Scientific_guideline/2009/09/WC500003937.pdf

Other features optimal biomarkers are:

(4) low variability

(5) high dynamic range

(6) clear dose (severity)-response relationship *

* adopted from http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Scientific_guideline/2012/06/WC500128686.pdf

This six features are prerequisites of biomarker which can be validated. Your question cover second important think its severity prediction. In case of any prediction we are using observed data to propose model which is used to calculation of predicted data. Model can be used for prediction (in your case severity of disease) after validation. Its common expectation across different studies. Very useful methods for model validation are LOO or LMO methods both described by OECD. Check some examples in my papers.

Article Models describing metronidazole pharmacokinetics in relation...

Article Correlation of elimination fraction area under the curve wit...

Article Leave-one-out Procedure in the Validation of Elimination Rat...

Article Correlation Between In Silico Physicochemical Characteristic...

Hope its will be useful in your research,

Best regards

Tomasz

Thank you Tomasz for your kind and elaborate reply. Really appreciate it.

Stay healthy stay happy

Aniruddha

You're welcome !

Best regards

Tomasz

In studying the pathogenesis of any infection, I would do a panel of cytokines. This is easy and not too expensive using the Luminex platform. It is now recognized that sepsis from infection results from a multi cytokine response.