Sepsis & Acute Respiratory Distress
Improving detection and treatment when every minute counts.
Sepsis and acute respiratory distress remain among the most time-sensitive and life-threatening complications of infection. This cluster brings together critical care, emergency medicine and biomedical engineering expertise to improve early recognition, refine treatment protocols and develop the tools clinicians need to act decisively in the moments when outcomes are most on the line.
EPIC Sepsis & Acute Respiratory Distress News
U of T researchers unveil new preclinical insights into why males are more likely to have severe COVID-19
A new study from a team of EPIC members has uncovered the biological reasons underlying sex differences in COVID-19 outcomes and is offering a promising new strategy to prevent illness. Early on during the pandemic, clinicians quickly noticed that males were more likely than females to be hospitalized or admitted to the ICU or to die from COVID-19 despite having similar infection rates. This pattern held true across all age groups and in countries around the world. The research, conducted in mice and published in the journal iScience, points to the ACE2 protein as a key contributor to differences in COVID-19 outcomes between males and females.