Transcriptome analysis of six tissues obtained post mortem from sepsis patients

Background: Septic shock is a life-threatening clinical condition characterized by a robust immune inflammatory response to disseminated infection. Little is known about its impact on the transcriptome of distinct human organs. Objective and Methods: To address this, we performed RNA sequencing of samples from the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, heart, lung, kidney and colon of seven individuals who succumbed to sepsis and seven uninfected controls. Main Results: We identified that the lungs and colon were the most affected organs. While gene activation dominated, strong inhibitory signals were also detected, particularly in the lungs. Principal Conclusions: We found that septic shock is an extremely heterogeneous disease, not only when different individuals are investigated, but also when comparing different tissues of the same patient. However, several pathways, such as respiratory electron transport and other metabolic functions, revealed distinctive alterations, providing evidence that tissue specificity is a hallmark of sepsis. Strikingly, we found evident signals of accelerated ageing in our sepsis population. Overall design: We performed RNA-seq on frozen autopsy samples of six distinct tissues (prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, heart, lung, kidney and colon) obtained from seven patients who died of septic shock and seven critically ill patients who died of non-infectious diseases.