Leveraging Bioinformatic Strategies to Advance Care of Children With Urinary Tract Infections

ABSTRACT

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections and pose a significant global health challenge in children. UTIs can cause a range of conditions from cystitis and pyelonephritis to bacteraemia. Current methods for diagnosing UTI lack adequate sensitivity and specificity and are time‐consuming, driving demand for improved approaches. Although most UTIs resolve with antibiotic therapy, some children develop recurrent UTIs due to multidrug‐resistant organisms and progressive chronic kidney disease. Currently, there are no reliable methods to identify which children are at risk for adverse outcomes, representing a critical gap in paediatric UTI management. This review explores how bioinformatic approaches can offer a comprehensive framework to harness scientific discoveries and meet clinical challenges posed by paediatric UTI. Recent advances in high‐throughput sequencing and proteomics have generated extensive datasets, enabling detailed analysis of microbial and host responses during UTI. We summarize how computational and multi‐omics approaches, including metagenomics, bulk and single‐cell transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenetics and integrative frameworks, have deepened our understanding of UTI pathogenesis and the foundational determinants of a successful host response. We consider the collective potential of these discoveries and technologies to transform future UTI management.