Sepsis patients could get the right treatment faster based on their genes, new research suggests.
People with the life-threatening condition could be treated based on their immune system’s response to infection, not their symptoms, researchers say.
The new study uncovers how different people respond to to the condition based on their genetic makeup.
“Our study is the next step towards being able to treat sepsis based on someone's genetics and their particular immune response, instead of their symptoms...— Dr Katie Burnham
It is hoped that these findings could help identify who would benefit from certain treatments and lead to the development of targeted therapies.
In the future, this approach to personalised medicine could also be applied to other less severe infections, not just sepsis.
Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection and occurs when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection and starts to damage the body’s own tissues and organs.
In the UK, 245,000 people are affected by sepsis every year in the UK – including around 2,000 children, with at least 48,000 people losing their lives in sepsis-related illnesses every year, according to UK Sepsis Trust.
Dr Katie Burnham, first author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “Our study is the next step towards being able to treat sepsis based on someone’s genetics and their particular immune response, instead of their symptoms, which can vary greatly from person to person.
She added: “Being able to molecularly categorise patients with sepsis allows clinicians to correctly identify who could benefit from the available treatments and gives new direction to those developing targeted therapies.”
Previously, researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Oxford and collaborators, identified genes that allowed them to categorise who was most at risk from poorer outcomes from sepsis and Covid-19.
In this new study the team analysed data from the UK Genomic Advances in Sepsis (GAinS) study that contained 1,400 patients with sepsis.
They found that genetic variation in groups of patients is associated with differences in immune response – how the body recognises and defends itself against bacteria, viruses, and harmful substances – during sepsis.
They then used this information to describe what biological networks, cells, and mechanisms are involved in each response.
The next steps would be to further investigate the immune response to find targeted treatments for each immune response or different stages of the immune response.
Dr Julian Knight, co-senior author from the University of Oxford, said: “Understanding who is at greater risk from sepsis and how they respond to the disease is a huge task.
“Our research can be directly translated into the clinic and we hope that it allows us to start to develop an efficient, targeted approach to treating this life-threatening disease.”
Dr Emma Davenport, co-senior author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “Sepsis is a complicated and devastating disease that impacts millions of people around the world each year.
“Understanding the molecular processes that happen during sepsis, and how genetics plays a role in this, can help give answers to long-standing questions, improve patient outcomes, and allow for the development of effective clinical trials that lead to new targeted treatments as quickly as possible.”
The findings are published in the Cell Genomics journal.
