Digging for disease markers of sepsis.

Using a novel combination of techniques, Gary Siuzdak and colleagues at Mass Consortium Corp.; Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD); and the Scripps Research Institute identified 10 potential biomarkers that distinguished the serum of patients with sepsis from that of other very sick patients. They report their findings in this issue of JPR (pp 3154– 3160). This disease “turned out to be one of the more difficult problems we could have gone after, because sepsis can result from many different sources,” says Siuzdak. Sepsis, which kills >200,000 Americans every year, develops when the bloodstream is overwhelmed by toxin-producing microorganisms.