Sepsis and Intestinal Microvascular Endothelial Dysfunction

Sepsis is a major life‐threatening health‐care problem. According to statistics, there are 20–30 million new cases of sepsis worldwide annually, which causes equivalent deaths from acute myocardial infarction and kills more people than breast cancer, stroke, and AIDS combined. About 41% of cases of sepsis progress to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), resulting in mortality as high as 30–50%.[1] We believe that excessive inflammation leads to a series of changes of endothelium‐associated proteins and molecules, which eventually results in coagulation disorder, overactivation of inflammatory response, and vascular leakage.