Sepsis is one of the major causes of in-hospital mortality. There is no specific treatment for sepsis and the management relies on early diagnosis and in-time prognosis. However, presently there still lack accurate methods to detect infection and organ dysfunction, two major factors define sepsis. Cell-free nucleic acids are emerging as biomarkers for many diseases and other physiological processes. Since it’s relatively noninvasive and samples can be collected repeatedly, the cell-free nucleic acids biomarker is preferred in many applications. Here, we evaluated the potential of using plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA) as a tool for assessment of patients in intensive care unit (ICU). We find that the concentration of cfDNA, the Bacteria species composition and the abundance of certa...[ Read more ]

Sepsis is one of the major causes of in-hospital mortality. There is no specific treatment for sepsis and the management relies on early diagnosis and in-time prognosis. However, presently there still lack accurate methods to detect infection and organ dysfunction, two major factors define sepsis. Cell-free nucleic acids are emerging as biomarkers for many diseases and other physiological processes. Since it’s relatively noninvasive and samples can be collected repeatedly, the cell-free nucleic acids biomarker is preferred in many applications. Here, we evaluated the potential of using plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA) as a tool for assessment of patients in intensive care unit (ICU). We find that the concentration of cfDNA, the Bacteria species composition and the abundance of certain Bacteria species profiled by cell-free DNA are correlated with present diagnosis parameters of sepsis and are also correlated with clinical outcomes of patients in ICU. Furthermore, we develop a new strategy to remove host genome fragments from cell-free DNA sequencing library, as well as a new method to better profile highly fragmented and low-concentrated cell-free RNA for next-generation sequencing. These new methods can be more powerful for assessment of patients in ICU.