Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Davis, California, USA.
Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California, Davis, California, USA.
J Extracell Vesicles. 2024 Sep;13(9):e12506. doi: 10.1002/jev2.12506.
Sepsis following burn trauma is a global complication with high mortality, with ∼60% of burn patient deaths resulting from infectious complications. Diagnosing sepsis is complicated by confounding clinical manifestations of the burn injury, and current biomarkers lack the sensitivity and specificity required for prompt treatment. There is a strong rationale to assess circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) from patient liquid biopsy as sepsis biomarkers due to their release by pathogens from bacterial biofilms and roles in the subsequent immune response. This study applies Raman spectroscopy to patient plasma-derived EVs for rapid, sensitive, and specific detection of sepsis in burn patients, achieving 97.5% sensitivity and 90.0% specificity. Furthermore, spectral differences between septic and non-septic burn patient EVs could be traced to specific glycoconjugates of bacterial strains associated with sepsis morbidity. This work illustrates the potential application of EVs as biomarkers in clinical burn trauma care and establishes Raman analysis as a fast, label-free method to specifically identify features of bacterial EVs relevant to infection amongst the host background.
烧伤后发生的脓毒症是一种具有高死亡率的全球并发症，约 60%的烧伤患者死亡是由感染并发症引起的。脓毒症的诊断因烧伤损伤的临床表现复杂而变得复杂，并且当前的生物标志物缺乏用于及时治疗所需的灵敏度和特异性。由于细菌生物膜中的病原体释放和在随后的免疫反应中的作用，评估来自患者液体活检的循环细胞外囊泡 (EVs) 作为脓毒症生物标志物具有很强的理由。本研究应用拉曼光谱对患者血浆衍生的 EVs 进行快速、敏感和特异性检测烧伤患者脓毒症，实现了 97.5%的灵敏度和 90.0%的特异性。此外，脓毒症和非脓毒症烧伤患者 EVs 之间的光谱差异可追溯到与脓毒症发病率相关的细菌菌株的特定糖缀合物。这项工作说明了 EVs 作为生物标志物在临床烧伤创伤护理中的应用潜力，并确立了拉曼分析作为一种快速、无标记的方法，可特异性识别与宿主背景相关的感染中细菌 EVs 的相关特征。
