A new blood test which could save lives in the treatment of the sepsis marks progress. Researchers from several children’s hospitals in the United States have been developing the test – which they call PERSEVERE – for more than ten years. Recently, they evaluated it in two ways. The findings of the study have been published in Science Translational Medicine. 

At first, they used the test to predict the risk of death in more than 400 children severely ill with sepsis. Then, they used the test on mice with experimental sepsis to compare treatment decisions. 

According to Dr Hector Wong, the study’s senior investigator and first author PERSEVERE not only puts patients into groups according to the deadliness of the sepsis but that it also enables doctors to decide which treatments to give to specific patients, such as picking the right drugs and dosages. 

Over the ten years or more than that, the researchers have been developing PERSEVERE, they have evaluated it using information from more than 1,000 children. They started with a panel of 80 biomarkers and progressively reduced it to five. According to the team, five is a manageable number for bringing together various advanced methods for searching and then choosing treatments.

In their study, the authors list the five PERSEVERE biomarkers as: “C-C chemokine ligand 3 (CCL3), interleukin 8 (IL8), heat shock protein 70 kDa 1B (HSPA1B), granzyme B (GZMB), and matrix metallopeptidase 8 (MMP8). The team evaluated the latest version of PERSEVERE using blood samples from 461 critically ill children with sepsis who were under care at several pediatric hospitals in the U.S. They also tested the tool in mouse models of sepsis. The researchers note that each biomarker is a protein that “reflects sepsis biology.”

As regulators have not yet approved the tool for clinical use, the researchers did not allow the results to inform decisions about patient care and treatment. All they did was check its accuracy and evaluate its potential. 

As regulators have not yet approved the tool for clinical use, the researchers did not allow the results to inform decisions about patient care and treatment. All they did was check its accuracy and evaluate its potential.

The results showed that PERSEVERE predicted with high reliability which children would develop severe sepsis and which would not. The researchers then used the same five biomarkers in a mouse model of sepsis. The test accurately predicted which animals were at high and low risk of death. The researchers then went back to the children’s samples and confirmed that those individuals at higher risk of death from sepsis also had much greater quantities of bacteria in their blood. PERSEVERE can also give useful clues about the biological origins of the sepsis and the mechanisms that drive its rapid progress. This information could aid in the development of new treatments.

The researchers are continuing to develop and refine PERSEVERE as a prognostic tool and to discover more about the underlying biology of sepsis. They are also working on an adult version.

Source: Medical News Today. 

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