Introduction: Sepsis is thought to be an abnormal inflammatory response to infection. However, most clinical trials of drugs that modulate the inflammatory response of sepsis have been unsuccessful. Emerging genomic evidence shows that the host response in sepsis does not conform to a simple hyper-inflammatory/hypo-inflammatory model. We, therefore, synthesized current genomic studies that examined the host response of circulating leukocytes to human sepsis.
Methods: Electronic searches were performed in Medline and Embase (1987 to October 2010), supplemented by additional searches in multiple microarray data repositories. We included studies that (1) used microarray, (2) were performed in humans and (3) investigated the host response mediated by circulating leukocytes.
Results: We identified 12 cohorts consisting of 784 individuals providing genome-wide expression data in early and late sepsis. Sepsis elicited an immediate activation of pathogen recognition receptors, accompanied by an increase in the activities of signal transduction cascades. These changes were consistent across most cohorts. However, changes in inflammation related genes were highly variable. Established inflammatory markers, such as tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin (IL)-1 or interleukin-10, did not show any consistent pattern in their gene-expression across cohorts. The finding remains the same even after the cohorts were stratified by timing (early vs. late sepsis), patient groups (paediatric vs. adult patients) or settings (clinical sepsis vs. endotoxemia model). Neither a distinctive pro/anti-inflammatory phase nor a clear transition from a pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory phase could be observed during sepsis.
Conclusions: Sepsis related inflammatory changes are highly variable on a transcriptional level. We did not find strong genomic evidence that supports the classic two phase model of sepsis.