The role of genomics to identify biomarkers and signaling molecules during severe sepsis.

Early strategies to diagnose, manage and predict outcome of sepsis are essential to further improve morbidity and mortality of sepsis. Whereas biomarkers have become mainstay in other fields of medicine, their clinical utility in sepsis remains generally much less proven and so biomarkers are much less used clinically. The Human Genome Project embellished genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics and continues to expand our knowledge of the genetic, gene expression, protein translational and metabolic discoveries that could lead to clinical biomarker tests related to sepsis thereby allowing insight into the disease as never seen before. We explore the genomic approach to biomarker identification and validation by reviewing pertinent studies related to the diagnosis (diagnostic biomarkers), prediction of response to therapies (predictive biomarkers) and (prognostic biomarkers) outcomes of sepsis.