Could novel sepsis phenotypes explain clinical trial failures?

New research has identified novel sepsis phenotypes, highlighting that sepsis isn’t a single condition and that different subtypes could benefit from different treatments.

The JAMA study, which involved over 60,000 patients from three observational cohort and could explain the heterogeneity of treatment effects and the failure of several recent clinical trials for sepsis.

Lead author Christopher Seymour (University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA) commented: “For over a decade, there have been no major breakthroughs in the treatment of sepsis; the largest improvements we’ve seen involve the enforcing of ‘one-size fits all’ protocols for prompt treatment but these protocols ignore that sepsis patients are not all the same.”