Project description:Sepsis impacts males and females differently. Males have higher incidence, illness severity and mortality in sepsis than females. In this study, we use mouse models of fecal-induced peritonitis (FIP) to study sex disparities in sepsis. Male mice show higher illness severity, physiological derangement and end-organ dysfunction compared to females. Sex-biased outcome was driven by gonadal sex but not chromosome-linked gene effects. The results of this study indicate that male-biased sepsis severity is driven by impaired infection tolerance in males due to sex-biased mechanisms of mitochondrial function. We did not find differences in infection resistance or canonical immune/inflammatory pathways between males and female mice. Here we performed RNA-sequencing on mouse liver hepatocytes of uninfected and septic males and females.
Project description:Bioenergetic dysfunction is an archetypal finding in critical illness, particularly among patients with severe sepsis. A central feature of sepsis is the shift towards pathologic immunosuppression, especially among CD4 T cells, predisposing to secondary infections and ineffectual organ recovery. However, it remains unknown whether metabolic abnormalities contribute to CD4 T cell dysregulation in critically ill sepsis patients. We collected PBMC from medical and surgical ICU patients at Vanderbilt University Medical Center or community-matched healthy controls. We performed single cell RNA-sequencing with 10x Genomics droplet-based technology on a subset of 9 healthy controls, 19 ICU patients without sepsis, and 19 ICU patients with sepsis to generate a 644,147 cell map of critical illness.
Project description:Severely-afflicted COVID-19 patients can exhibit disease manifestations representative of sepsis, including acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiple organ failure. We hypothesized that diagnostic tools used in managing all-cause sepsis, such as clinical criteria, biomarkers, and gene expression signatures, should extend to COVID-19 patients. Here we analyzed the whole blood transcriptome of 124 early (1-5 days post-hospital admission) and late (6-20 days post-admission) sampled patients with confirmed COVID-19 infections from hospitals in Quebec, Canada. Mechanisms associated with COVID-19 severity were identified between severity groups (ranging from mild disease to the requirement for mechanical ventilation and mortality), and established sepsis signatures were assessed for dysregulation. Specifically, gene expression signatures representing pathophysiological events, namely cellular reprogramming, organ dysfunction, and mortality, were significantly enriched and predictive of severity and lethality in COVID-19 patients. Mechanistic endotypes reflective of distinct sepsis aetiologies and therapeutic opportunities were also identified in subsets of patients, enabling prediction of potentially-effective repurposed drugs. The expression of sepsis gene expression signatures in severely-afflicted COVID-19 patients indicates that these patients should be classified as having severe sepsis. Accordingly, in severe COVID-19 patients, these signatures should be strongly considered for the mechanistic characterization, diagnosis, and guidance of treatment using repurposed drugs.
Project description:Identifying at first clinical presentation gene expression signatures that predict subsequent severity will allow clinicians to identify the most at risk groups of patients, and also enable appropriate antibiotic use. Accordingly, we characterized the blood immune profiles of patients with early/pre-sepsis to identify signatures reflecting disease severity, organ dysfunction, mortality, and specific endotypes/mechanisms.
Project description:Background: Sepsis involves aberrant immune responses to infection, but the exact nature of this immune dysfunction remains poorly defined. Bacterial endotoxins like lipopolysaccharide (LPS) are potent inducers of inflammation, which has been associated with the pathophysiology of sepsis, but repeated exposure can also induce a suppressive effect known as endotoxin tolerance or cellular reprogramming. It has been proposed that endotoxin tolerance might be associated with the immunosuppressive state that was primarily observed during late-stage sepsis. However, this relationship remains poorly characterised. Here we clarify the underlying mechanisms and timing of immune dysfunction in sepsis. Methods: We defined a gene expression signature characteristic of endotoxin tolerance. Gene-set test approaches were used to correlate this signature with early sepsis, both newly and retrospectively analysing microarrays from 593 patients in 11 cohorts. Then we recruited a unique cohort of possible sepsis patients at first clinical presentation in an independent blinded controlled observational study to determine whether this signature was associated with the development of confirmed sepsis and organ dysfunction. Findings: All sepsis patients presented an expression profile strongly associated with the endotoxin tolerance signature (p < 0.01; AUC 96.1%). Importantly, this signature further differentiated between suspected sepsis patients who did, or did not, go on to develop confirmed sepsis, and predicted the development of organ dysfunction. Interpretation: Our data support an updated model of sepsis pathogenesis in which endotoxin tolerance-mediated immune dysfunction (cellular reprogramming) is present throughout the clinical course of disease and related to disease severity. Thus endotoxin tolerance might offer new insights guiding the development of new therapies and diagnostics for early sepsis. For the RNA-Seq study reported here, 73 patients were recruited with deferred consent at the time of first examination in an emergency ward based on the opinion of physicians that there was a potential for the patient's condition to develop into sepsis. These were retrospectively divided into groups based on clinical features and compared to 11 non-urgent surgical controls.
Project description:THREE ARE SOME TECH PROBLEMS WHICH WILL BE SOLVED SOON! Sepsis, the dysregulated host response to infection causing life-threatening organ dysfunction, is an unmet global health challenge. Here we apply high-throughput tandem mass spectrometry to delineate the plasma proteome for 2622 sepsis and comparator samples (non-infected critical illness, postoperative inflammation and healthy volunteers) involving 4553 liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analyses in a single batch, at 100 samples/day. We show how this scale of data can establish shared and specific proteins, pathways and co-expression modules in sepsis, and be integrated with paired leukocyte transcriptomic data (n=837 samples) using matrix decomposition. We map the landscape of the host response in sepsis including changes over time, and identify features relating to etiology, clinical phenotypes and severity. This work reveals novel subphenotypes informative for sepsis response state, disease processes and outcome, highlights potential biomarkers, pathways and processes for drug targets, and advances a systems-based precision medicine approach to sepsis.
Project description:Investigatation into how genes with sex-differential expression profiles are distributed among the chromosomes in Drosophila. Assayed the expression of 14,142 predicted transcripts in competitive hybridizations and found a dramatic underrepresentation of X-chromosome genes showing high relative expression in male. This is the first report of sex-biased expression of the full (predicted) genome. Findings indicate that there is significant sex-biased expression, especially in gonads. Genes showing sex-biased gene expression profiles are likely to have sex-biased functions. Keywords: other
Project description:Sepsis induces profound immune dysregulation, often resulting in chronic critical illness characterized by persistent immunosuppression and poor outcomes. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are central mediators of this immunosuppressive phenotype, yet the influence of age and sex on their transcriptional and metabolic states remain poorly understood. Here, we employed single-cell RNA sequencing of splenic leukocytes from young (3-4 months) and older (18-24 months) adult male and female mice subjected to a clinically relevant murine sepsis model to define age- and sex-specific MDSC phenotypes. We identified significant differences regarding age and sex in MDSC expansion, transcriptome, canonical pathway activation, RNA velocity, mitochondrial metabolism, and predicted cell-cell communication after sepsis. Using drug2cell analysis of total leukocytes we also identified cohort-specific drug target profiles. These findings underscore the importance of age and sex in shaping sepsis-induced MDSC biology and suggest that personalized immunomodulatory strategies targeting MDSCs could improve sepsis outcomes.
Project description:Background: Sepsis involves aberrant immune responses to infection, but the exact nature of this immune dysfunction remains poorly defined. Bacterial endotoxins like lipopolysaccharide (LPS) are potent inducers of inflammation, which has been associated with the pathophysiology of sepsis, but repeated exposure can also induce a suppressive effect known as endotoxin tolerance or cellular reprogramming. It has been proposed that endotoxin tolerance might be associated with the immunosuppressive state that was primarily observed during late-stage sepsis. However, this relationship remains poorly characterised. Here we clarify the underlying mechanisms and timing of immune dysfunction in sepsis. Methods: We defined a gene expression signature characteristic of endotoxin tolerance. Gene-set test approaches were used to correlate this signature with early sepsis, both newly and retrospectively analysing microarrays from 593 patients in 11 cohorts. Then we recruited a unique cohort of possible sepsis patients at first clinical presentation in an independent blinded controlled observational study to determine whether this signature was associated with the development of confirmed sepsis and organ dysfunction. Findings: All sepsis patients presented an expression profile strongly associated with the endotoxin tolerance signature (p < 0.01; AUC 96.1%). Importantly, this signature further differentiated between suspected sepsis patients who did, or did not, go on to develop confirmed sepsis, and predicted the development of organ dysfunction. Interpretation: Our data support an updated model of sepsis pathogenesis in which endotoxin tolerance-mediated immune dysfunction (cellular reprogramming) is present throughout the clinical course of disease and related to disease severity. Thus endotoxin tolerance might offer new insights guiding the development of new therapies and diagnostics for early sepsis.
Project description:Both sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) rely on imprecise clinical definitions leading to heterogeneity, which has contributed to negative trials. Because circulating protein/DNA complexes have been implicated in sepsis and ARDS, we aimed to develop a proteomic signature of DNA-bound proteins to discriminate between children with sepsis with and without ARDS. We performed a prospective case-control study in 12 children with sepsis with ARDS matched to 12 children with sepsis without ARDS on age, severity of illness score, and source of infection. We performed co-immunoprecipitation and downstream proteomics in plasma collected ≤ 24 h of intensive care unit admission. Expression profiles were generated, and a random forest classifier was used on differentially expressed proteins to develop a signature which discriminated ARDS. The classifier was tested in six independent blinded samples. Neutrophil and nucleosome proteins were over-represented in ARDS, including two S100A proteins, superoxide dismutase (SOD), and three histones. Random forest produced a 10-protein signature that accurately discriminated between children with sepsis with and without ARDS. This classifier perfectly assigned six independent blinded samples as having ARDS or not. We validated higher expression of the most informative discriminating protein, galectin-3-binding protein, in children with ARDS. Our methodology has applicability to isolation of DNA-bound proteins from plasma. Our results support the premise of a molecular definition of ARDS, and give preliminary insight into why some children with sepsis, but not others, develop ARDS.