Approved Research

The long-term clinical outcomes of sepsis

Lay summary

Sepsis is the body's extreme response to infection. It is a life-threatening organ dysfunction and a medical emergency. According to recent estimates, a large percentage of those patients that survive sepsis will experience phenomena that may linger for weeks, months, or even years after recovery. Particularly, recent studies observed increased morbidity of sepsis survivors, as well as high rate of re-hospitalization and deficits in multiple systems such as the cognitive, psychiatric, cardiovascular, and renal systems. This health condition is referred to as 'long sepsis'. Despite the high prevalence of health problems related to long sepsis, the knowledge about this medical condition remains limited. In this study, we will use the clinical, molecular, and physiological data available in the UK Biobank to study long sepsis. First, we will describe the long-term complications of sepsis and how long do they last. Second, we will identify subgroups of long-sepsis patients with shared clinical manifestations. We refer to these subgroups as "clinical subtypes" of long sepsis. For each clinical subtype of long sepsis, we will identify biomarkers for early diagnostics, and in addition, we will determine the effectiveness of the various treatments. Finally, we will use the UK biobank data to identify shared and distinct mechanisms between long-sepsis and other chronic conditions, such as non-sepsis infections, trauma, cardiovascular diseases and autoimmunity. Overall, this study will provide an improved understanding of the clinical status of sepsis patients after hospital discharge. In addition, it will open the way to a personalized medicine of long-sepsis patients. We expect that this study will take around 3 years to finalize and publish.