All 11 cytokines that achieved statistical significance across severity groups during JT trend analysis in both early and later phases (GRO-α, IL-1RA, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IP-10, MIG, FGF-2, IL-5, MDC, and MIP-1α) had satisfactory AUC values in both phases for discriminating severe/critical from mild/moderate infections when age was adjusted as a significant confounding factor (Figure 4A and Supplementary Figure 2). This evidence concerns the gene CXCL8 and infection.