Septic shock and systemic inflammatory response syndrome patients' CD15+ granulocytes were subjected to global transcriptional profiling (SIRS)
In the United States, sepsis, the body's response to infection in a typically sterile circulation, is a leading causeof death (1). To assess the primary transcriptional alterations associated with each illness state, I utilized amicroarray data set from a cohort of thirtyone individuals with septic shock or systemic inflammatory responsesyndrome (2). At the transcriptional level, I discovered that the granulocytes of patients with SIRS weresimilar to those of patients with septic shock. SIRS showed a “intermediate” gene expression state betweenthat of control patients and that of septic shock patients for numerous genes expressed in the granulocyte. Thediscovery of the most differentially expressed genes in the granulocytic immune cells of patients with septicshock might aid the development of new therapies or diagnostics for an illness with a 14.7 percent to 29.9% inhospitaldeath rate despite decades of study (1).