ReviewMethods (San Diego, Calif.)2013
Is there value in plasma cytokine measurements in patients with severe trauma and sepsis?
Review in Methods (San Diego, Calif.), 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- IL-6 Baseline Values and Dynamic Changes in Predicting Sepsis Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Biomolecules · 2025Pooled it
- Plasma interleukin-6 concentration for the diagnosis of sepsis in critically ill adults.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2019Pooled it
- Host Genetic Regulation of NLRP3 Inflammasome Cytokines Reveals Immune and Vascular Pathways in HIV.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Targeting sepsis through inflammation and oxidative metabolism.World journal of critical care medicine · 2025Review
- Continuous Biosensing to Monitor Acute Systemic Inflammation, a Diagnostic Need for Therapeutic Guidance.ACS sensors · 2025Review
- Engineered mesenchymal stromal cells with interleukin-1beta sticky-trap attenuate osteoarthritis in knee joints.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2025Article
- Dynamic functional assessment of T cells reveals an early suppression correlating with adverse outcome in polytraumatized patients.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Immune profile of patients‑a new approach in management of sepsis and septic shock?Experimental and therapeutic medicine · 2024Article
- Characterization of Early Peripheral Immune Responses in Patients with Sepsis and Septic Shock.Biomedicines · 2022Article
- Absence of Stress Hyperglycemia Indicates the Most Severe Form of Blunt Liver Trauma.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Plasma interleukin-6 levels correlate with survival in patients with bacterial sepsis and septic shock.Interventional medicine & applied science · 2021Article
- Potential mechanisms of tumor progression associated with postoperative infectious complications.Cancer metastasis reviews · 2021Review
- Immunopathophysiology of trauma-related acute kidney injury.Nature reviews. Nephrology · 2021Review
- Bacterial virulence plays a crucial role in MRSA sepsis.PLoS pathogens · 2021Article
- A Whole Blood Enzyme-Linked Immunospot Assay for Functional Immune Endotyping of Septic Patients.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2021Observational
- Analysis of Inflammatory Mediator Profiles in Sepsis Patients Reveals That Extracellular Histones Are Strongly Elevated in Nonsurvivors.Mediators of inflammation · 2021Article
- Sickness Behavior Score Is Associated with Neuroinflammation and Late Behavioral Changes in Polymicrobial Sepsis Animal Model.Inflammation · 2020Article
- Prospective Validation of a Transcriptomic Metric in Severe Trauma.Annals of surgery · 2020Article
- Animal-Free Human Whole Blood Sepsis Model to Study Changes in Innate Immunity.Frontiers in immunology · 2020Article
- Infection-induced innate antimicrobial response disorders: from signaling pathways and their modulation to selected biomarkers.Central-European journal of immunology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
For the past thirty years, since IL-1β and TNFα were first cloned, there have been efforts to measure plasma cytokine concentrations in patients with severe sepsis and trauma, and to use these measurements to predict clinical outcome and response to therapies. The numbers of cytokines and chemokines that have been measured in the plasma have literally exploded with the development of multiplex immune approaches. Dozens of relatively small cohort studies have shown plasma cytokine concentrations correlating with outcome in sepsis and trauma. Despite what appears to be a consensus that plasma cytokine concentrations should be useful in the clinical setting, only two cytokines, IL-6 and procalcitonin, have approached routine clinical use. IL-6 has been used as a research tool for entry into sepsis-intervention trials, while procalcitonin is being used clinically at a large number of institutions to distinguish sepsis from other inflammatory processes. For most cytokines, the relative lack of sensitivity and specificity of individual or multiplex cytokine measurements has hindered their utility to predict clinical trajectory in individual patients. The problem rests with a general misunderstanding of cytokine biology, failing to appreciate the general paracrine nature of these mediators, the presence of binding proteins, chaperones and inhibitors in the plasma, and the rapid clearance of these proteins by binding to cell receptors and clearance predominantly by the kidney. The future of using plasma cytokine measurements as an indicator of sepsis/trauma severity or predicting outcome is generally behind us, although there is optimism that procalcitonin measurements may ultimately prove to have utility in the diagnosis of severe sepsis.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.