Active clinical trials for "Sepsis"

Patients with alcohol use disorders are often cared for in the intensive care unit (ICU). We estimate that close to half of the patients we care for in our ICU have alcohol use disorders. One of the reasons that patients with alcohol use disorders are frequently cared for in our ICU is because patients with alcohol use disorders are at higher risk of developing infections. The medical term for infections is sepsis. When an infection develops, patients with alcohol use disorders tend to get more severely ill compared to patients who do not have alcohol use disorders. Patients with alcohol use disorders are also at higher risk of dying when they develop severe infections. The purpose of this study is to determine why patients with alcohol use disorders become more severely ill when they develop infections. There are a number of reasons why this is possible. One reason is that a hormone called cortisol is higher in individuals with alcohol use disorders (who do not have infections). This hormone is also higher in patients who are at increased risk of dying from severe infections. One of the aims of this study is to see if cortisol levels are higher in patients with alcohol use disorders compared to those who do not have alcohol use disorders. Another reason why patients with alcohol use disorders are at increased risk of developing infections is because their immune system is not functioning properly. A second aim of this study is to see if certain markers of immune function are different in patients with alcohol use disorders compared to patients without alcohol use disorders. Patients with alcohol use disorders are also more likely to become confused when they are in the ICU. This condition is called delirium. Delirium is marked by abrupt onset of altered level of consciousness, disorganized thinking, and inattention that changes over time. Delirium tremens is one form of delirium. About 80% of our ICU patients develop delirium, and many patients who do not have alcohol use disorders develop the disorder as well. Patients with alcohol use disorders who have high cortisol levels have a higher chance of developing delirium compared to patients with normal cortisol levels. A third aim of this study is to examine the relationship between delirium and cortisol in both patients with and without alcohol use disorders.

Neutrophils are indispensable for host defense and have an important roles in modulating the immune system in both the innate and adaptive immune response. Neutrophils operate using a number of different mechanisms including chemotaxis, phagocytosis, release of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and granular proteins, and the production and liberation of cytokines for this purpose. A controlled neutrophil response is required to combat infection; an dysregulated state of this response can cause sepsis, tissue damage, and organ failure. Sepsis and septic shock are the leading causes of death especially in intensive care units (ICU), and their mortality can be reduced with prompt diagnosis and appropriate treatment modality. From this point of view, many biomarkers have been evaluated for the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment response of infection and sepsis. An objective marker of cellular dysfunction of neutrophils would be a helpful tool for the clinician in detecting and monitoring changes related to infection status and to determine development of sepsis and positive effects of interventions.

Systemic hyperinflammatory states, e.g. triggered by infection/sepsis, represent a major challenge for modern medicine. After an initially localized onset, inflammation can extend to an excessive, uncontrolled inflammatory reaction affecting the entire body and can trigger circulatory failure with subsequent irreversible multiple organ failure. Despite all the medical advances made in recent years, sepsis continues to be a substantial problem, as almost all therapeutic approaches have failed to prove their efficacy to date. Mortality in this clinical entity thus remains extremely high. In Germany alone, more than 100,000 people suffer from sepsis or septic shock every year, nearly half of whom die despite optimal therapy. Thus, sepsis is the third most common cause of death, has major importance both from a medical but also from an economical viewpoint, and approaches that could contribute to its successful treatment need to be further developed and explored. If a patient experiences the spread of bacteria or their constituents in the blood stream due to an uncontrolled source of infection, the result is a deliberately triggered physiological defense reaction of the body. In many patients, however, there is a pathological dysregulation of these mechanisms, in a way that the defense reaction goes far beyond the physiological level required, resulting in an excessive immune response of the body, which is mainly facilitated by inflammatory mediators such as cytokines and chemokines. The immune response spreads throughout the body and also dissipates into organs unaffected by the original infection. In cases of such unwanted overshooting immune responses, an attempt to regain control of the described deleterious systemic events seems reasonable by removing the excess amount of cytokines from the blood, thus preventing or treating organ failure. In this context, current therapeutic approaches increasingly focus on the elimination of inflammatory mediators. In recent years, hemoadsorption, using a new adsorber (CytoSorb), has been used to treat sepsis and other conditions of hyperinflammation. The advantage of this therapeutic principle is that a wide range of inflammatory mediators are removed. In conjunction with the enormous elimination capacity, the effective and rapid reduction of mediators can be achieved. To date, there have been more than 61,000 treatments using this procedure worldwide without device-related side effects being reported. The investigators have been treating patients with this procedure for over 5 years with consistently very favorable results. Therefore, the investigators would like to expand and deepen their observations with the proposed project.

This study compares giving prophylactic IgM enriched Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIG) with placebo in 1 hour after birth, in neonates with risk factors of Early-Onset Neonatal Sepsis (EONS). In addition to the intervention, standard regimen antibiotics are also given within 1 hour. The IVIG is given for 3 days and primary and secondary outcomes will be collected. Risk factors are both from maternal and neonate origin.

Sepsis is a life threatening organ dysfunction caused by infection. Severe sepsis is expected to rise due to resistance to antibiotics. Inappropriate use of antibiotics in the ICU leads to adverse drug reaction and bacterial resistance. Using biomarkers for infection as PCT and CRP are useful in diagnosing infection and duration of therapy. CRP based protocol will be compared to PCT based protocol for reducing the length of stay and reduction of antibiotic use in critically ill patients.

In sub-Saharan Africa, non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) are a frequent cause of bloodstream infection, display high levels of antibiotic resistance and have a high case fatality rate (15%). In Kisantu hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), NTS account for 75% of bloodstream infection in children and many children are co-infected with Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) malaria. NTS bloodstream infection presents as a non-specific severe febrile illness, which challenges early diagnosis and, as a consequence, prompt and appropriate antibiotic treatment.Moreover, at the first level of care, frontline health workers have limited expertise and diagnostic skills and, as a consequence, clinical danger signs that indicate serious bacterial infections are often overlooked. Basic handheld diagnostic instruments and point-of-care tests can help to reliably detect danger signs and improve triage, referral and the start of antibiotics, but there is need for field implementation and adoption to low-resource settings. Further, it is known that some clinical signs and symptoms are frequent in NTS bloodstream infections. The integration of these clinical signs and symptoms in a clinical decision support model can facilitate the diagnosis of NTS bloodstream infections and target antibiotic treatment. The investigators aim to develop such a clinical decision support model based on data from children under five years old admitted to Kisantu district referral hospital in the Democratic republic of the Congo. While developing the model, the investigators will focus on the signs and symptoms that can differentiate NTS bloodstream infection from severe Pf malaria and on the clinical danger signs that can be assessed by handheld diagnostic instruments and point-of-care tests. The deliverable will be a clinical decision support model ready to integrate in an electronic decision support system.

This study is a multicenter randomized controlled trial. The purpose of this study is to assess the efficacy of the combination of PCR and CRISPR/Cas12a in alveolar lavage fluid for early targeted anti-infective therapy for patients with severe pneumonia. Hosted by the Department of Critical Care Medicine, Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical College, 5 adult ICU units participate in 3 hospitals. All patients are randomly assigned to the experimental group and the control group. For experimental group, the combined detection of PCR and CRISPR/Cas12a in the alveolar lavage fluid was carried out in the early stage, and the antibiotic scheme is changed base on the results of PCR-CRISPR/Cas12a.The patients in the control group were adjusted according to the traditional microbial detection methods. The types of early antibiotics, the proportion of target antibiotics, the duration of anti-infective treatment, the length of hospital stay in ICU, the mortality rate, the secondary antibiotic-associated diarrhea, and the incidence of new multidrug-resistant infections were recorded.

Eurobact II will investigate the mortality and morbidity of hospital-acquired blood stream infections in patients treated in intensive care units (ICU). It will investigate the effects of the micro-organism and its characteristics, such as type and resistance to antibiotics on the infection and its consequences. It will also investigate the effects of the antibiotics and other treatments on survival of patients. Eurobact II will include patients from multiple ICUs in multiple countries.

The goal of our study was to investigate whether different methods of dressing could lower catheter-associated bloodstream infections.

Populations at high risk of Sepsis-Associated Acute Kidney Injury (SA-AKI) have been identified. Sources of sepsis, in particular, bloodstream infection, abdominal and genitourinary sepsis, and infective endocarditis, are associated with a higher likelihood of developing AKI. Similar to the poor outcome of patients with sepsis, delayed administration of appropriate antimicrobial therapy was shown to be an independent predictor of the development of AKI. Incremental delays in antimicrobial delivery after the onset of hypotension showed a direct relationship with the development of AKI. The need for sensitive, simple and time-applicable biomarker to predict AKI development after renal insult is urgent. Serum creatinine (sCr) and urea are used routinely for the diagnosis of AKI. However, these parameters are not accurate for the diagnosis of AKI. Cystatin C. (CysC) is suggested to be a good biomarker because of its constant rate of production, almost filtered by glomeruli (99%), has no significant protein binding and not secreted by renal tubule. Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) is recently identified and extensively investigated as a most promising early marker of AKI. Urinary NGAL is not only effective in detection of AKI but also its degree of expression might distinguish among AKI, prerenal azotemia and chronic kidney disease, and it is detectable before the accumulation of serum creatinine. Ultrasonography (US) is used routinely to assess renal morphology. Renal Resistive Index (RRI) is a non-invasive Doppler-measured parameter that is directly correlated with intra-renal arterial resistance. RRI is defined as [(peak systolic velocity - end diastolic velocity)/ peak systolic velocity]. It theoretically ranges from 0 to 1 and it is normally lower than 0.7 with age differences. RRI calculation was found to be useful as an early indicator of the vascular resistance changes and in the determination of the optimal systemic hemodynamics required for renal perfusion. The aim of this study is to compare the ability of arterial renal resistive index (RRI), serum and urinary neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), Cystatin C (CysC) in early diagnosis and predicting the persistence of acute kidney injury in septic patients.