By integrating large-scale data sources, including the CDC’s National Hospital Discharge Survey and the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End-Results (NCI SEER) cancer database, we were able to identify cancer as the chronic comorbidity with the highest rate of contracting sepsis – even higher than for patients with HIV or diabetes. For patients with cancer, the risk of sepsis is 10x higher than for patients without cancer. Importantly, cancer is the most common comorbidity in septic patients with nearly 100,000 cases annually. Cancer is also the comorbidity associated with the highest risk of death in patients with sepsis. As with other conditions that we have studied, there are racial and gender disparities in incidence and outcome with sepsis for patients with cancer.
Craig Coopersmith, MD has created a murine model that replicates the increased mortality seen in septic cancer patients compared to previously healthy patients who develop sepsis and our groups are together studying possible mechanisms through which pre-existing cancer increases mortality when a host develops sepsis. Based upon preliminary data, both the immune system and gut integrity appear to be involved, and Coopersmith’s lab is examining both in multiple models of sepsis with multiple tumor lines to determine whether results are generalizable or specific to either type of sepsis or type of cancer.