Canadian researchers develop test they say can help diagnose life-threatening sepsis – CTV
May 27, 2025
TORONTO — A team of Canadian researchers has created a test they say could quickly predict if a patient is going to develop sepsis, a life-threatening condition that happens when the immune system has a dysfunctional reaction to an infection and starts attacking the body’s own organs and tissues.
Sepsis kills thousands of people in Canada and close to 50 million people worldwide every year, said Dr. Claudia dos Santos, senior author of a research paper about the test published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Treating sepsis quickly is crucial to survival, said dos Santos, who is a clinician-scientist and critical care physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
“A one-hour delay in the treatment of sepsis can increase mortality by close to eight per cent,” she said, noting that acting within the first six hours is very important.
The problem is that there is currently no single test that can tell doctors which patients with infections — which can be anything from COVID-19 to a bacterial infection from a cut — will go on to develop sepsis, she said.
