• Peter Bentzer, Chris Fjell, Keith R Walley, John Boyd, and James A Russell.
• Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. peter.bentzer@med.lu.se.
• Intensive Care Med. 2016 Dec 1; 42 (12): 1970-1979.

PurposeTo investigate if plasma cytokine concentrations predict a beneficial response to corticosteroid treatment in septic shock patients.MethodsA cohort of septic shock patients in whom a panel of 39 cytokines had been measured at baseline (n = 363) was included. Patients who received corticosteroids were propensity score matched to non-corticosteroid-treated patients. An optimal threshold to identify responders to corticosteroid treatment for each cytokine was defined as the concentration above which the odds ratio for 28-day survival between corticosteroid- and non-corticosteroid-treated patients was highest.ResultsPropensity score matching partitioned 165 patients into 61 sets; each set contained matched corticosteroid- and non-corticosteroid-treated patients. For 13 plasma cytokines threshold concentrations were found where the odds ratio for survival between corticosteroid- and non-corticosteroid-treated patients was significant (P < 0.05). CD40 ligand was associated with the highest odds ratio and identified 21 % of the patients in the propensity score matched cohort as responders to corticosteroid treatment. Combinations of triplets of cytokines with a significant odds ratio, using the thresholds identified above, were tested to find a higher proportion of responders. IL3, IL6, and CCL4 identified 50 % of the patients in the propensity score matched cohort as responders to corticosteroid treatment. The odds ratio for 28-day survival was 19 (95 % CI 3.5-140, P = 0.02) with a concentration above threshold for a least one of these cytokines.ConclusionPlasma concentration of selected cytokines is a potential predictive biomarker to identify septic shock patients that may benefit from treatment with corticosteroids.

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