A clinical data-driven machine learning approach for predicting the effectiveness of piperacillin-tazobactam in treating lower respiratory tract infections.

Background: In hospitalized patients, inadequate antibiotic dosage leading to bacterial resistance and increased antimicrobial use intensity due to overexposure to antibiotics are common problems. In the present study, we constructed a machine learning model based on patients' clinical information to predict the clinical effectiveness of Piperacillin-tazobactam (TZP) (4:1) in treating bacterial lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs), to assist clinicians in making better clinical decisions.

Methods: We collected data from patients diagnosed with LRTIs or equivalent diagnoses admitted to the Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Shanghai Pudong Hospital, Shanghai, between January 1, 2021, and July 31, 2023. A total of 26 relevant clinical features were extracted from this cohort. Following data preprocessing, we trained four models: Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Gaussian Naive Bayes. The dataset was split into training and test sets using a 7:3 ratio. The top-performing models, as determined by Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC)-Area Under the Curve (AUC) on the independent test set, were subsequently ensembled. Ensemble model (EL) performance was evaluated using bootstrap resampling on the training set and ROC-AUC, recall, accuracy, precision, F1-score, and log loss on an independent test set. The optimal model was then deployed as a web application for clinical outcome prediction.

Results: A total of 1,314 patients primarily treated with TZP as initial empiric antibiotic therapy were enrolled in the analysis. The success group comprised 995 patients (75.7%), while the failure group consisted of 319 patients (24.3%). We constructed an ensemble learning model based on the Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine and Random Forest models, which showed better overall performance. The EL model demonstrated robust performance on an independent test set, exhibiting a ROC-AUC of 0.69, a recall of 0.69, an accuracy of 0.64, a precision of 0.40, a F1-score of 0.50, and a log loss of 0.66. A corresponding web application was then developed and made available at http://106.12.146.54:1020/ .

Conclusions: In this study, we successfully developed and validated an EL model that effectively predicts the clinical effectiveness of TZP (4:1) in treating bacterial LRTIs. The model achieved a balanced performance across key evaluation metrics, demonstrating the model's potential utility in clinical decision-making. The web-based application makes this model readily accessible to clinicians, potentially helping optimize antibiotic dosing decisions and reduce both inadequate treatment and overexposure. While promising, future studies with larger datasets and prospective validation are needed to further improve the model's performance and validate its clinical utility. This work represents a step forward in using machine learning to support antimicrobial stewardship and personalized antibiotic therapy.