A new test developed by University of British Columbia researchers could help physicians predict within an hour if a patient will develop severe sepsis so they can begin treatment immediately.
Sepsis, a syndrome caused by infection, leads to organ failure and is responsible for up to five million deaths annually. There are 18 million cases of sepsis worldwide every year.
The study, published recently in the journal eBiomedicine, describes a gene signature associated with sepsis. The test, developed by John Boyd, an Assistant Professor in the Division of Critical Care Medicine, and Bob Hancock, a Professor in in the Faculty of Science (Department of Microbiology and Immunology), takes as little as one hour and identified 96 per cent of patients who were at the early stages of sepsis.
John Boyd
The findings also reveal a potential misunderstanding about the disease. Until now sepsis has been treated as an inflammatory disease but more than 30 clinical trials of anti-inflammatory drugs for sepsis have failed. The gene signature identified by Hancock and his colleagues relates to a special type of immune suppression called cellular reprogramming, and suggests that treating inflammation in sepsis is a bad idea.
The new test, by reducing the time needed to confirm if a patient is suffering from sepsis, will increase the odds that they will respond to treatment. A typical diagnosis can take 24 to 48 hours but with this new test, physicians could start treating patients almost immediately.
“We can test for this genetic signature as soon as the patient arrives in the emergency ward,” Dr. Hancock says. “With sepsis, every hour counts. The treatment involves aggressive antibiotics but the most potent drugs can’t be administered until a diagnosis is confirmed because of the risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria.”