Hospitalized patients lack pathogen-specific comorbidity signatures: general vulnerability and case fatality drive differences in mortality

Enterococcus faecium bloodstream infections show the highest case fatality across infection sites, with adjusted 30-day mortality hazard ratio 1.91 (95% CI 1.65–2.22) despite lower prevalence.

• Why it matters: Pathogen-specific comorbidity signatures and outcome prediction are unclear, limiting understanding of why mortality differs across infections in hospitalized patients.
• What they did: In a 39-month retrospective cohort of 16,282 tertiary-care inpatients with positive bacterial cultures, Cox models and logistic regression assessed mortality and comorbidity–pathogen links; five classifiers predicted 30-day mortality.
• The result: Comorbidity profiles were strikingly uniform across pathogens and sites, and machine-learning performance was limited, improving sensitivity mainly in elderly patients and those with E. faecium infections.

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