A recent survey showed that four out of five people in the Netherlands have not heard of sepsis. However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the relatively unknown disease causes about 11 million deaths worldwide each year. ‘Especially in low- and middle-income countries, the impact of sepsis is significant’, PhD researcher Feiyan Liu says.

‘Sepsis is an exaggerated reaction of the body to an infection’, she explains, ‘typically caused by bacteria.’ It can lead to organ dysfunction and in the most severe cases even to death. Treating sepsis is complex because the disease itself, the response of the body's immune system and the drug treatment all influence each other.

Ideally, a combination of these two types of treatments will eventually be used to cure sepsis. Throughout her PhD project, Liu demonstrated how mathematical models can bring together scattered knowledge about treatment of the disease. ‘Hopefully, we can continue to develop new combination treatments that are more effective in targeting the immune response in sepsis’, she concludes.

Source: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2023/07/new-treatments-for-life-threatening-disease-sepsis