An update on sepsis biomarkers

Sepsis is a dysregulated systemic reaction to a common infection, that can cause life-threatening organ dysfunction. Over the last decade, the mortality rate of patients with sepsis has decreased as long as patients are treated according to the recommendations of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, but is still unacceptably high. Patients at risk of sepsis should therefore be identified prior to the onset of organ dysfunction and this requires a rapid diagnosis and a prompt initiation of treatment. Unfortunately, there is no gold standard for the diagnosis of sepsis and traditional standard culture methods are time-consuming. Recently, in order to overcome these limitations, biomarkers which could help in predicting the diagnosis and prognosis of sepsis, as well as being useful for monitoring the response to treatments, have been identified. In addition, recent advances have led to the development of newly identified classes of biomarkers such as microRNAs, long-non-coding RNAs, and the human microbiome. This review focuses on the latest information on biomarkers that can be used to predict the diagnosis and prognosis of sepsis.