Markers of Inflammation and Metabolism in the ER

Adult patients with suspected or confirmed infection and who will be sampled for blood culture (a surrogate for suspected severe infection) will be recruited from three large emergency departments in a University hospital. Two blood samples will be collected: one for the analysis of matrix metalloproteinases, their inhibitor tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1), FGF-21 and metabolomic analyses. Another blood sample is for the analysis of blood lactate. Clinical data will be collected to calculate quick SOFA (qSOFA), in order to test whether lactate and/or MMP-8 will improve the prognostic model if they are added to qSOFA. The primary outcome measure is the number of days alive without the need for ICU or high dependency unit treatment. The ability of MMP-8 to discriminate severe infection from uneventful course of the disease will be studied. The secondary aim is to study the metabolic changes in acutely ill patients with infection and compare these variables between survivors and non-survivors. The planned number of patients recruited is 924. During this study the feasibility of a bedside rapid analysis of MMP-8 will be tested in 30 patients and the results obtained using the rapid analyser compared with laboratory results obtained using ELISA.