COVID-19: A major contributor to Sepsis, new study reveals

Recent research led by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital has unveiled a startling revelation: during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for COVID-19, was a more prevalent and deadly cause of sepsis than previously believed.

Viral sepsis has received limited attention in previous research, primarily due to the scarcity of comprehensive data. To obtain a more precise understanding of sepsis cases, the research team tapped into electronic health records from Mass General Brigham hospitals during the study period.

The team assessed the incidence and mortality rates of SARS-CoV-2-associated sepsis using clinical criteria adapted from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) sepsis surveillance definition. This criteria incorporated positive SARS-CoV-2 tests and clinical indicators of organ dysfunction. Analyzing EHR data spanning from March 2020 to November 2022, the researchers identified 431,017 hospitalizations involving 261,595 individuals.

During this period, 5.4% of hospitalizations were attributed to SARS-CoV-2 infections, with 28.2% of these cases associated with SARS-CoV-2-induced sepsis. Initially, patients with SARS-CoV-2-associated sepsis faced a high mortality rate of 33% during the pandemic's first three months. However, this rate gradually decreased over time, eventually aligning with the mortality rate for presumed bacterial sepsis, which remained stable at around 14.5% throughout the study.

Furthermore, the researchers confirmed that their electronic surveillance definition accurately identified cases of viral sepsis resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infections using the Mass General Brigham EHR dataset.