This serious disease is responsible for approximately 11 million deaths worldwide each year.
Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Oxford have found that genetic makeup could help determine the best treatment for patients with sepsis.
Published in Cell GenomicsThe findings from this study may lead to the development of targeted therapies to treat the disease.
Sepsis is a serious illness in which the body responds inappropriately to infection, leading to organ failure and causing 11 million deaths worldwide each year.
Treatment of sepsis varies depending on the patient’s immune response, which can be difficult to determine based on symptoms alone.
Building on previous studies that have identified different subgroups of sepsis patients, the researchers analyzed data from the UK Sepsis Genomics Advances Study, which included 1,400 patients with sepsis due to community-acquired pneumonia and faecal peritonitis, to explore the impact of genetic variants that control the expression of quantitative trait loci (eQTLs), a type of gene expression.
After finding that genetic variants within patient groups were associated with differences in immune responses during sepsis, the research team identified key genetic regulators within each group, helping to explain what biological networks, cells and mechanisms are involved in each response.
In doing so, different patient responses will provide additional information for the development of therapies acting on the immune system, providing a personalized medicine approach to the treatment of sepsis.
In addition, the University of Oxford is developing a rapid test to identify different subtypes of sepsis and quickly identify patients who would benefit from targeted treatment.
The researchers plan to further investigate the immune response to find targeted treatments for each immune response or its different stages, which will help design rapid tests, organize clinical trials and develop targeted therapies to treat sepsis more quickly.
Lead author Dr Katie Burnham, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “Our study is the next step towards being able to treat sepsis based on an individual’s genes and specific immune response, rather than on symptoms which vary widely from person to person.”
