Sepsis is the body’s extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical emergency and it happens when an infection triggers a harmful chain reaction throughout the body. Without timely diagnosis, triage, and treatment, sepsis can rapidly lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death. Survival of a septic patient is critically dependent on the ability both to control infection and to regain homeostasis via the resolution of inflammatory responses. Although there has been significant advancement in the understanding of the disease pathology, clinical management of sepsis is difficult due in part to the lack of reliable prognostic measures and appropriate treatments that improve patient survival. In addition, true therapeutic breakthroughs will require accurate and relevant biomarkers identifying subgroups of patients who will benefit from novel treatments targeted to the pathophysiologic pathway signaled by that biomarker.
Rochester scientists have found that low C1q protein levels in neutrophils of sepsis patients are associated with a low survival rate and that the rate of survival increases if septic animals are given the exogenously expressed C1q protein. The local secretion of C1q by apoptotic neutrophils functions as an ‘eat me’ signal to promote clearance by phagocytes, which is essential for better patient prognosis during sepsis. A method has been developed for treating sepsis using C1q administered exogenously.
Can be administered by different routes (intravenous, oral inhalation or nasal spray or retrograde infusion from the bladder). C1q expression in neutrophils may be a powerful tool that can be exploited in both predicting severity outcomes and beginning earlier treatment of acute systemic inflammation, to increase the potential for successful triage of severely ill patients already admitted to hospital ICUs.
Sepsis