On 15 November 2022 the high impact journal Cell Reports Medicine published the study «Towards personalized immunotherapy in sepsis». The study is describing the results of the PROVIDE trial that took place in 11 study sites in Greece; three of the sites are departments of the Medical School of NKUoA. Co-ordinating investigator is Evangelos J. Giamarellos-Bourboulis who is Professor of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the NKUoA.
Prof. Giamarellos-Bourboulis is also serving as the active chairman of the European Sepsis Alliance. The study classifies for the first time critically ill patients hospitalized with septic shock in the Intensive Care Units into three distinct categories of immune activation: patients with immune hyper-function; patients with immune hypo-function; and patients with daily variations in immune activation.
«Findings support that although all three categories of patients appear clinically similar, they are so diverse so that 80% of the patients at immune hyper-function die after 28 days compared to 60% of patients at hypo-function and 35% of those on daily variations” commented Prof. Giamarellos-Bourboulis. He also commented that «the next stage of development should be the implementation of different therapies targeting the specific level of immune activation».