Sepsis
Q. Which of the following is/are true?
1) Sepsis is caused by negligible response of the immune system to an infection.
2) The main causative agents of sepsis are Gram-negative bacteria.- Published on 19 Apr 16a. Only 1
b. Only 2
c. Both 1 and 2
d. Neither 1 nor 2
ANSWER: Only 2
- Septicemia (or, sepsis) is the leading cause for deaths in hospitals worldwide.
- Sepsis is caused by the overwhelming response of the immune system to an infection.
- The main causative agents of sepsis are Gram-negative bacteria due to their predominance in the normal intestinal flora and the environment. Specifically, it is the endotoxin, a major constituent of the Gram-negative bacterial cell wall that causes sepsis.
- In lieu of expensive and time-consuming methods for diagnosis of sepsis, Prof. Shalini Gupta from the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Delhi and Dr. Venkataraman Sritharan from Hyderabad have developed a low-cost, disposable, point of care device for bedside use for sepsis diagnosis.
- The device is a colorimetric rapid card test to detect endotoxin levels in human serum sample.
- A commonly used antibiotic colistin is combined with (conjugated) gold nanoparticles to act as a detection probe. They used the drug to detect endotoxin as they did not want to use the antibody detection method and it also reduces the cost of testing.
- The device which took about three years to develop won the Gandhian Young Technology Innovation award in March 2016.
