Precision medicine has been established as a means to achieve a better approach to sepsis

Sepsis is responsible for 11 million deaths annually in Europe. A work published by the European EGIS Consortium in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine Contributes to identifying all techniques to evaluate the immune response of patients who develop the disease and to pursue early diagnosis and more personalized treatment

Jesús Bermejo, principal investigator of the Biosepsis Group of the Salamanca Biomedical Research Institute (IBSAL), has co-led, from the European consortium EGIS, this pioneering work “which represents an important advance in precision medicine for the treatment of sepsis”.

This work identifies all existing techniques to evaluate the immune response in disease, that is This will facilitate earlier diagnosis and the application of more personalized treatment for each patient.

Currently, sepsis, the most serious form of infection, has a mortality rate of between 10 and 20%, rising to 40% in cases of septic shock, causing 11 million deaths worldwide annually, approximately 17,000. In Spain.

In this context, as Dr. Bermejo, principal researcher at CIBER and associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Salamanca (USAL), points out, it should be borne in mind that “in sepsis There are very clear immunological changes that have a lot to do with its pathophysiology, but it is interesting that we have not been able to evaluate them yet.To optimize the management of these patients.

Now, after two years of intensive work, experts from different specialties forming the European Sepsis Immunology Group (EGIS), coordinated by IBSAL and the Jena Sepsis Care and Control Center (Germany), have succeeded in compiling all the diagnostic tools available Has attained. Hospital centers and others will soon be implemented with which “immunological photo” can be done, which will allow us to better identify when the infection is progressing towards sepsis, and at the same time, start earlier and choose better treatment. . ,We have already learned from the world of cancer that treatment must be individualized, as it must be in sepsis“, assures Dr. Jesús Bermejo, senior author of the article published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine together with Sarah Cazander, Fabien Venet, Matthijs Koks or Jorge C. Schefold.

It is a set of validated techniques to analyze the value of different biomarkers that can be measured in blood, with simple procedures that are emerging ranging from flow cytometry to more related to gene expression – there are cartridges that are already in half. RNA is measured using GHG, biosensors are used to establish protein levels, or nephelometers are used to determine immunoglobulins, etc.

In the words of the IBSAL researcher, “The important thing, as we highlight in the article, All this information has to be combined with artificial intelligence to treat the whole person.“, taking into account your immune system, the clinical condition you suffer from and the pathogen that is infecting you, thus obtaining what we call combitips that can help us make better decisions “

For all this, it represents a qualitative leap forward for clinical practice. Consensus among thirty researchers of the European collaboration network EGIS regarding the use and validity of these procedureswhich are already part of daily hospital life but are not routinely applied to identify patients with sepsis and evaluate its severity.

“Clinicians treating these patients need to be aware that there are tools that, if we use them to their full potential, and also combine the information they provide, we can identify the disease much earlier.” We can do it and treat it better.” ” the researcher concluded.