Journal of Diagnostics Concepts & Practice ›› 2025, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (06): 567-575.doi: 10.16150/j.1671-2870.2025.06.001

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Advances in sepsis screening technologies

LIU Gan, DAI Yuanyuan, CHANG Wenjiao, MA Xiaoling()   

  1. Department of Clinical Laboratory, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Anhui Hefei 230001, China
  • Received:2025-07-31 Revised:2025-10-15 Online:2025-12-25 Published:2025-12-25
  • Contact: MA Xiaoling E-mail:maxiaoling@ustc.edu.cn.

Abstract:

Sepsis is a life-threatening syndrome of organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated systemic inflammatory response to infection. Early recognition and precise intervention are crucial for improving the prognosis of sepsis patients. In recent years, significant progress has been made in technologies related to sepsis, such as etiological identification, host-response assessment, and intelligent-assisted diagnosis, enhancing the diagnosis and treatment capability of sepsis. This review provides a systematic overview of advances in etiological identification [such as rapid mass spectrometry identification of positive blood culture, metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS), droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR), and T2 magnetic resonance], the application of host-response monitoring markers [such as procalcitonin (PCT), interleukin-6 (IL-6), monocyte human leukocyte antigen-DR (mHLA-DR), and emerging non-coding RNAs] in infection recognition and immune monitoring, and the roles of multi-omics (transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in early warning, endotyping, and individualized therapy of sepsis. Additionally, this review highlights the current limitations of sepsis screening technologies, and outlines future directions for cross-disciplinary collaboration to promote precise screening and clinical translation.

Key words: Sepsis, Screening technologies, High-throughput sequencing, Multi-omics, Artificial intelligence

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