Babies have an immune mechanism that makes them more likely than adults to die from sepsis, according to a study published in April 2019 in Critical Care.
Researchers at the Center for Research on Inflammatory Disease in Brazil set out to discover which substances are produced by the organs during sepsis, since previous experiments have shown younger individuals with sepsis (both humans and mice) have higher levels of organ injury. They injected a group of infant mice and a group of adult mice with intestinal bacteria, which caused them to develop sepsis. All of the infants and half the adults died.
The researchers also tested blood samples from human pediatric and adult patients and found infants with sepsis produced 40 percent more neutrophil extracellular traps, which are structures that trap and kill pathogens but also damage human cells. When the researchers broke down the NETs in mice with recombinant human DNA, however, the infant survival rate jumped from zero to 50 percent and adult survival increased from 50 to 60 percent.
The researchers concluded greater infant sepsis mortality is due to higher levels of NETs. As a next step, they plan to test new therapeutic approaches based on the study's results.