Data Card: CORTICUS Hydrocortisone Stratification Whole-Blood Microarray Dataset (GSE106878)

Summary

Expression + sample metadata + feature metadata for GSE106878, a transcriptomics sub-study of the CORTICUS trial (Sprung et al. 2008, NEJM) investigating whether the pre-treatment serum IFNγ/IL10 ratio predicts which septic shock patients benefit from hydrocortisone therapy, profiled on an Illumina platform (GPL10295). Paired pre-/post-treatment whole-blood samples from patients treated with either hydrocortisone or placebo.

Source accession

Accession	N (samples)	N (patients)	Platform	Retrieval source
GSE106878	94	47 (28 IFNγ/IL10-high, 19 IFNγ/IL10-low)	Illumina (GPL10295)	NCBI GEO

All 47 patients have exactly 2 samples: Pre (morning of treatment start) and Post(24h). 48 hydrocortisone-arm samples, 46 placebo-arm samples.

Files

• sample_metadata.parquet — one row per sample: sample_id, patient_id, sex, age, responder (logical), pre_treatment (high/low, IFNγ/IL10 ratio), survive_28_days (logical), timepoint (Pre/Post(24h)), treatment (hydrocortisone/placebo)
• feature_metadata.parquet — one row per probe (feature_id, Illumina NuID): annotation from illuminaHumanv2.db (SYMBOL, ENTREZID, ENSEMBL, GENENAME, UNIPROT), plus IlluminaID, ProbeQuality, CodingZone, ProbeSequence, SecondMatches, OtherGenomicMatches, RepeatMask, OverlappingSNP, GenomicLocation from the package's internal ExtraInfo table
• expression.parquet — single file, long format: feature_id, sample_id, value

Sample metadata field notes

• pre_treatment is the pre-randomization IFNγ/IL10 ratio stratification (high/low), the study's central biomarker variable — not a treatment-timing field despite the name. It is constant across a patient's Pre/Post samples (assessed once, before randomization).
• responder reflects the study's hydrocortisone-benefit prediction (derived from the IFNγ/IL10 stratification), constant per patient.

Expression value processing

Values are as deposited by the submitter. log2 normalized.

Provenance / reproducibility

See pull_gse106878.R.