Recent advances in biomarkers for detection and diagnosis of sepsis and organ dysfunction: a comprehensive review

Sepsis is life-threatening inflammatory disease, and its pathogenesis and prognostic factors remain unclear. In addition, the symptoms and signs of sepsis patients lack specificity, which makes the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis evaluation of sepsis extremely difficult. Recently, with the emergence and development of detection technologies, various sepsis-related biomarkers have emerged. Biomarkers could be considered as indicators of either infection or dysregulated host response or response to treatment and/or aid clinicians to prognosticate patient risk. Therefore, searching for reliable biomarkers and evaluating their role in sepsis is envisaged to aid clinical decision-making. This article reviews the advances in research on sepsis biomarkers and their application in the early prediction of organ dysfunction to improve our understanding of current sepsis biomarkers and provide a reference for the application of biomarkers in the clinical diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of sepsis. Besides, we propose that the combining multiple biomarkers is expected to be a more accurate and comprehensive strategy to evaluate the condition and prognosis of sepsis patients.