Researchers find 11 genes enabling early sepsis diagnosis

U.S. researchers said Wednesday they have identified a set of 11 genes that could help more quickly and accurately diagnose patients with sepsis and distinguish them from those with other forms of inflammation.

Sepsis, often called blood poisoning, is a severe, often life- threatening illness caused by the immune system's over-aggressive response to infections. The disease progresses rapidly and can lead to a dangerous fall in blood pressure and failure of critical organs.

"It's critical for clinicians to diagnose sepsis accurately and quickly, because the risk of death from this condition increases with every passing hour it goes untreated," senior author Purvesh Khatri, assistant professor of biomedical informatics research at the Stanford University, said in a statement.

In practice, distinguishing sepsis from sterile inflammation, which is not caused by infection, is very difficult. Right now, the only diagnostics that can help do this are too slow or too inaccurate, or both, Khatri said.

In their study, Khatri and his colleagues looked at more than 2, 900 blood samples from nearly 1,600 patients and found a set of 11 genes showed a slight bump in activity two to five days before patients were diagnosed with sepsis.

That means a blood test based on these genes could lead to an earlier diagnosis than with current approaches, which is key considering the rapid rate at which sepsis mortality rises once it gets a foothold, Khatri said.

They also found the gene-activation signature showed a sepsis- detecting accuracy surpassing that of methods now in use.

The findings were published in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine.

Currently, sepsis is the leading cause of hospital deaths in the United States, accounting for nearly half of the total number, and is tied to the early deaths of at least 750,000 Americans each year. Its estimated annual cost to the health-care system exceeds 24 billion U.S. dollars. Endite