Sepsis, or blood poisoning, more life-threatening and common than cancer: study

Sepsis, more commonly known as blood poisoning, is getting termed to be a cause of more deaths around the world than cancer, as per a new theory.

Conducted by the researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Washington schools of medicine, the study cites that around one in five deaths appear to be a cause of the disease as 48.9 million cases of sepsis worldwide were reported in 2017, with 11 million deaths.

If the statistics mentioned in the study are to be believed, this accounts for almost 20 percent of the deaths worldwide.

A detailed version of the study that took place recently revealed that over 109 million individual death records and trends within the period of 1990 till 2017. This was concluded through the records of people admitted into hospitals infected with the disease as compared to the one who had not been hospitalized.

Sepsis infects the body upon its overreaction to an infection that leads to blood vessels becoming permeable which results in failure of multiple organs.

The study found 85 percent of the cases in 2017, to be hailing from low or middle sociodemographic regions with 40 percent of those infecting children under the ages of five.

Lead author of the study and assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Critical Care Medicine, Dr Kristina Rudd said: “What our colleagues who live and work in those settings have been saying for decades is that clinically every single day, they’re seeing a tremendous burden of sepsis. So I think finally we have data to put to that experience of colleagues. And indeed, they were right.”

The disease is also said to attack even healthy people with an infection that becomes unbridled.