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Sepsis heterogeneity

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Abstract

Background

Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection, with extremely high mortality. Notably, sepsis is a heterogeneous syndrome characterized by a vast, multidimensional array of clinical and biologic features, which has hindered advances in the therapeutic field beyond the current standards.

Data sources

We used PubMed to search the subject-related medical literature by searching for the following single and/or combination keywords: sepsis, heterogeneity, personalized treatment, host response, infection, epidemiology, mortality, incidence, age, children, sex, comorbidities, gene susceptibility, infection sites, bacteria, fungi, virus, host response, organ dysfunction and management.

Results

We found that host factors (age, biological sex, comorbidities, and genetics), infection etiology, host response dysregulation and multiple organ dysfunctions can all result in different disease manifestations, progression, and response to treatment, which make it difficult to effectively treat and manage sepsis patients.

Conclusions

Herein, we have summarized contributing factors to sepsis heterogeneity, including host factors, infection etiology, host response dysregulation, and multiple organ dysfunctions, from the key elements of pathogenesis of sepsis. An in-depth understanding of the factors that contribute to the heterogeneity of sepsis will help clinicians understand the complexity of sepsis and enable researchers to conduct more personalized clinical studies for homogenous patients.

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Data availability

All relevant raw data can be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Biorender Website where the figure was created.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81971810 to Chun-Feng Liu), Liaoning Province Science and Technology Major Special Project (No.2020JH1/10300001 to Chun-Feng Liu), Shenyang Science and Technology Plan Project (20–205-4–002 to Chun-Feng Liu).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, Sheng**g Hospital of China Medical University, No. 36, SanHao Street, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, 110004, China

    Wei Wang & Chun-Feng Liu

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  1. Wei Wang
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LCF: performed study concept, design and revision of the paper (Conceptualization, Writing—review & editing); WW: performed development of writing the paper (Writing—original draft).

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Correspondence to Chun-Feng Liu.

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Wang, W., Liu, CF. Sepsis heterogeneity. World J Pediatr 19, 919–927 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12519-023-00689-8

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