Diagnosing sepsis remains problematic. Pathogen identification is frequently lacking and the dysregulated host response is non-specific. Blood cultures often take days to deliver a result and, even then, approximately 90% are negative, sometimes despite strong clinical evidence of sepsis.

Standard host-response biomarkers such as C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT) and white cell count are routinely utilised; however, these are insufficiently discriminatory and lack specificity.

This is especially challenging in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting where many patients have underlying sterile inflammation that can closely mimic clinical and laboratory features of sepsis.

Despite the arrival of multiple new sepsis biomarkers over the years, none has yet achieved widespread adoption by consistently outperforming the standards.

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