$4.87 million grant supports development of sepsis diagnostic device
Fast, precise tool could offer personalized critical care to ICU patients, military personnel
Critically ill patients with sepsis — a condition in which the body’s response to an infection spirals out of control and can lead to organ damage — often arrive at the intensive care unit (ICU) with similar symptoms, such as fever, low blood pressure and kidney failure, among others. But researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have revealed that sepsis patients actually fall into two distinct profiles, based on biological clues in their blood: one with severe inflammation and organ damage, and the other with a less severe response.
Targeting treatments to these biological profiles could help doctors treat people with sepsis more effectively, according to Pratik Sinha, MBChB, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at WashU Medicine. In particular, therapies that were previously deemed unsuccessful may prove to be effective for patients with the severe inflammation profile. But there aren’t clinical tools to accurately and quickly identify these subgroups, which have also been found among patients with other critical illnesses, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, a condition often caused by sepsis that results in severe lung failure.
A research team led by Sinha has received a $4.87 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop a clinical test and handheld device to measure the amount of two biological markers in the blood that can help physicians quickly group patients with sepsis into either a high-risk hyperinflammatory profile or a less severe hypoinflammatory profile.
“Developing a precise test and an affordable device to quickly identify patients with the high-risk hyperinflammatory profile is crucial for delivering targeted treatments and saving lives in critical situations when time matters,” said Sinha. “A highly portable device will enable deployment in active military and combat zones, where trauma increases the risk of infection and sepsis.”
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