Bench-to-bedside review: understanding genetic predisposition to sepsis (original) (raw)

Sepsis is a complex syndrome that develops when the initial, appropriate host response to an infection becomes amplified, and is then dysregulated. Among other factors, the innate immune system is of central importance to the early containment of infection. Death from infection is strongly heritable in human populations. Hence, genetic variations that disrupt innate immune sensing of infectious organisms could explain the ability of the immune system to respond to infection, the diversity of the clinical presentation of sepsis, the response to current medical treatment, and the genetic predisposition to infection in each individual patient. Such genetic variations may identify patients at high risk for the development of sepsis and organ dysfunction during severe infections. Single base variations, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), are the most commonly used variants. There has been great interest in exploring SNP in those genes involved in the inflammatory cascade re...