Reduction of Pathogen Load From the Blood in Septic Patients With Suspected, Life-threatening Bloodstream Infection

With the lack of effective antibiotics for many bloodstream infections, and limited new anti-infectives in development, there is a significant unmet need for new approaches that can help treat drug-resistant infections, especially in patients at high risk. There is an unmet need for a safe and broad-spectrum hemoperfusion therapy that can quickly reduce bacterial load and shorten the duration of bacteremia, preferably without the need to first identifying the type of bacteria present in the blood. There is an emerging need to increase the efficacy of effective antibiotics, e.g., by using hemadsorption as adjunctive therapy, to by quickly reducing bacterial load while scavenging toxins released from bacteria. Finally, there is a medical growing need for an alternative therapy when no effective antibiotic is available.

Seraph 100 Microbind Affinity Blood Filter is used to reduce pathogen load during bloodstream infection. Bacteremia or bloodstream infection, also called BSI, occurs when a bacterial infection elsewhere in the body enters the bloodstream. This clinical condition can quickly become life-threatening and progress to sepsis. Sepsis is defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection (Singer et al., 2016).When sepsis occurs with extremely low blood pressure, it's called septic shock. Septic shock is fatal in many cases.

Sepsis can be triggered by many types of bacteremia although the exact source of the infection often cannot be determined. Some of the most common infections that lead to BSI are lung infections (i.e. pneumonia) and infections in the abdominal area. Patients who are already in the hospital for something else, such as a surgery, are at a higher risk of developing BSI. These infections are even more dangerous when the bacteria are already resistant to antibiotics. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that over 1 million Americans get sepsis each year. Between 28 and 50 percent of these patients may die from the condition.