Critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Forum
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Risk factors, host response and outcome of hypothermic sepsis.
Hypothermia is associated with adverse outcome in patients with sepsis. The objective of this study was to characterize the host immune response in patients with hypothermic sepsis in order to determine if an excessive anti-inflammatory response could explain immunosuppression and adverse outcome. Markers of endothelial activation and integrity were also measured to explore potential alternative mechanisms of hypothermia. Finally we studied risk factors for hypothermia in an attempt to find new clues to the etiology of hypothermia in sepsis. ⋯ Hypothermia during sepsis is independently associated with mortality, which cannot be attributed to alterations in the host immune responses that were measured in this study. Given that risk factors for hypothermic sepsis are mainly cardiovascular and that the endothelial activation marker fractalkine increased in hypothermia, these findings may suggest that vascular dysfunction plays a role in hypothermic sepsis.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Impact of HIV infection on the presentation, outcome and host response in patients admitted to the intensive care unit with sepsis; a case control study.
Sepsis is a prominent reason for intensive care unit (ICU) admission in patients with HIV. We aimed to investigate the impact of HIV infection on presentation, outcome and host response in sepsis. ⋯ Sepsis is more often caused by pneumonia in HIV-positive patients. HIV infection has little impact on the disease severity, mortality and host response during sepsis.