Metabolic phenotyping of traumatized patients reveals a susceptibility to sepsis

Sepsis is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in patients admitted in intensive care units (ICU) for trauma. The identification of biochemical mechanisms and prediction of patients at risk of early sepsis remain unsolved. Metabolic phenotyping allows the recovery of coordinated metabolic concentration variations. There are no predictive metabolic phenotyping studies based on noninvasive human samples to identify the later development of sepsis in traumatized patients. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the metabolic phenotype could help in the discrimination of patients according to the later development of sepsis. Plasma samples were taken from severely injured patients in the hours following their admission in the ICU. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) based metabolic phenotyping was performed on this prospective cohort. Statistical analyses were run on NMR spectra to discriminate patients according to the later development of sepsis. Twenty-two patients were included. One was excluded because of aberrant metabolic phenotype. Orthogonal partial least-squares analysis allowed the recovery of a predictive metabolic phenotype identifying patients with a later development of sepsis (1 + 4 component model, R(2) = 0.855, Q(2) = 0.384). A cross-validated receiver operator characteristic curve showed a remarkable prediction capacity (AUC = 0.778). Eight metabolic hotspots were identified. NMR-based metabolic phenotyping allows the prediction of patients at high risk of early sepsis after ICU admission for trauma. A larger cohort is necessary to validate and complete this study, understand biochemical mechanisms promoting sepsis development, and identify patients at risk.