
Microfluidics device helps diagnose sepsis in minutes - chmaynard
http://news.mit.edu/2019/biosensor-diagnose-sepsis-minutes-0723
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koverda
That's huge. Sepsis kills so many people each year (something like 6m per
year), and detected early it can be addressed.

For US stats, it's like 200,000 people dead per year from sepsis, and $24B
expenditure to treat it. Absolutely massive.

[https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/pages/factsheet_sepsis.a...](https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/pages/factsheet_sepsis.aspx)

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davak
IL6 is an inflammatory cytokine released due to a ton of stressors. Like
fever, tachycardia, or tachypnea — this may be more a marker of sickness than
sepsis.

Hopefully not, but let’s see the trial first.

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killjoywashere
It should take substantially less than 25 minutes to diagnosis sepsis by SIRS
criteria (1). A standard clinical lab has been able to run a CBC that fast for
decades and tell you how many of which white cells are present, hemoglobin,
etc. Not sure what Il-6 is getting me...

(1) [https://www.mdcalc.com/sirs-sepsis-septic-shock-
criteria](https://www.mdcalc.com/sirs-sepsis-septic-shock-criteria)

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jcims
This looks like it would fit onto something the size of a glucose test strip
and probably cost as much to manufacture. Could be useful for triage when
infrastructure is compromised or unavailable.

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killjoywashere
If you're diagnosing sepsis under conditions where you don't have a CBC
analyzer, you're looking at something like Charity Hospital after Katrina or
Fukushima after the tsunami, some remote place, or a space mission.

I'm all for microfluidics, don't get me wrong. But we need a library of chips
on hand to make sense of the range of things that could be happening to
someone. Sepsis is ... a big deal. Physician anywhere outside a major hospital
sees sepsis and their single, overriding thought is "get this person to a big
hospital, ASAP"

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jedberg
Wow, could have used this last week... BTW, anyone have good papers on how
long cognitive deficiencies after sepsis is supposed to last? Asking for a
relative.

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mikeyouse
SAE is probably the best term to search for but it looks like recovery depends
on the severity of the sepsis:

Sepsis Associated Encephalopathy:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4590973/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4590973/)

> _SAE should not be regarded as an acute reversible state and there may be
> long term cognitive as well as radiological deficits in survivors of SAE.
> The neurological outcome depends on the severity of sepsis: mild cases
> likely recover completely, while survivors of severe sepsis may have long
> term deficits. At present therapeutic choices are limited and are mainly
> based on symptom control._

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jedberg
Thank you this was very helpful.

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oska
Interesting to see (apparent) success on the type of promises that Theranos
made.

