Immune Failure in Critical Therapy (INFECT) study (England)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Immune Failure in Critical Therapy (INFECT) study: Phenotyping immune cell dysfunction to predict outcomes in critically ill adults
IRAS ID
127422
Contact name
Andrew Conway Morris
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Edinburgh
Research summary
Patients with critical illness (i.e. those admitted to an intensive care unit) are increasingly recognised to have impaired functions of their immune system, with this manifesting in their high risk of secondary severe infections (sepsis) whilst in hospital and in poor outcomes, including death, from severe infection (sepsis). Identifying those patients with dysfunctional immune systems, and predicting those who are at high risk of death, remains difficult and often uses complex assays which are not suitable for routine clinical use.
In a group of ICU patients we recently demonstrated that three relatively simple measures of markers carried by immune cells were able to accurately predict those patients who would go on to develop secondary infection. We also showed that these measures could predict risk of death from infection. Before these measures could enter clinical use they require to be validated in a new group of patients.
We aim to address these questions by taking serial, blood samples from patients admitted to ICU (measuring our markers of immune dysfunction and blood markers of inflammation) and relating this to the subsequent development of severe infection (sepsis) arising in the ICU . We shall recruit approximately 220 patients from 4 general ICUs over a two year period.
REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/WM/0207
Date of REC Opinion
6 Jun 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion