National Septic Shock Data Bank for Pediatric Patient Population

Principal Investigator: Hector Wong, MD

Septic shock is a condition in which multiple organs fail after a patient develops an infection. More than 4,000 children in the United States die from septic shock each year, despite the development of powerful antibiotics and high-level support for organ failure. Genetic makeup may play a role in the development of septic shock.

To develop a greater understanding of septic shock, Hector Wong, MD, with support from the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, has established a national-level genomic data bank of children who suffer from the condition. Using a technology called microarray, which enables researchers to study the interaction of large numbers of human genes and the cellular networks that control them, Dr. Wong will simultaneously examine all known genes in a given sample, while the Computational Medicine Center will facilitate storing, cataloging and analyzing the data.

Fifteen centers nationwide are collecting this data from children who suffer from septic shock, which is then compiled in a central data bank at Cincinnati Children's. The center uses bioinformatics and computational medicine to catalog and analyze the vast amounts of information generated by the process.

Since septic shock is caused by the way an individual patient's body reacts to an infection rather than the infection itself, the center hopes to identify genetic conditions that place a patient at risk. This will ultimately allow doctors to diagnose an individual's risk of septic shock and tailor therapy accordingly.