Immunoregulation During Sepsis

Lyle Moldawer, PhD, gives a plenary talk at the 44th Critical Care Congress. He discusses how sepsis produces an immunological dyscrasia that differs more quantitatively than qualitatively from other chronic and acute inflammatory responses and reviews the immunological changes that accompany sepsis: an initial hyper-inflammatory response followed by immune suppression, active concurrently. He defines a new syndrome for patients who survive the early hyper-inflammatory phase and enter a prolonged period of chronic inflammation and immune suppression.