A consortium of researchers headed by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center has discovered a gene expression pattern that could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of pediatric septic shock , still a serious public health problem despite today's potent antibiotics and pediatric intensive care units.
Consistent with Cincinnati Children's increased emphasis on personalized and predictive medicine , where diagnosis and treatment coincide with a person's genetic predisposition , the study involves the largest gene expression analysis to date of blood samples from children with septic shock. It found new evidence linking adverse clinical outcomes with the decreased expression of genes that encode proteins involved in zinc regulation. This unexpected finding suggests these proteins and zinc regulation could provide a target for therapeutic intervention to inhibit septic shock's progression to multiple organ failure.
"Zinc was not even on our radar screen for this disease process," said Dr. Hector Wong, M.D., professor of Pediatrics and director of Critical Care Medicine at Cincinnati Children's. "This study demonstrates the potential power of genomic medicine for discovery and the generation of novel hypotheses. We are ultimately interested in determining whether or not there are biologically significant gene expression profiles that distinguish survivors from non-survivors. The rationale is to discover novel biomarkers of poor outcome and novel therapeutic targets as means for developing more effective treatment strategies."