Introduce
The concept of sepsis can be traced back to ancient Greece when
Hippocrates described it as a dangerous, odorous, and biological body
decay [1]. From the establishment of the first
sepsis-1 consensus definition in 1991 to the revised sepsis-3 consensus
definition in 2016[2], we have a better
understanding of the definition, identification, and management of
sepsis. Early sepsis identification is the key factor to improve the
prognosis of sepsis. Therefore, the sepsis treatment guidelines were
revised again in 2021. The guidelines recommend the use of sequential
organ failure assessment (qSOFA), national early warning results (News),
and modified early warning results (Mews) scoring tools to identify and
screen early sepsis[3]. The pathophysiological
mechanism of sepsis has a new understanding and change. The systemic
inflammatory response caused by infection is no longer simply attributed
to sepsis. The occurrence of organ dysfunction will be one of the
important factors belonging to sepsis. The incidence and mortality of
sepsis in the world are still at a high level. A study counted the
incidence and mortality of sepsis in the world from 1979 to 2015 through
database retrieval. The report showed that there were about 50 million
patients with sepsis in the world, of which about 5 million died of
sepsis every year. However, these data were from high-income countries
or regions, which could not fully reflect the true incidence and
mortality of sepsis in the world but were higher than the current
statistics, This is related to data loss and lack in low-income
countries or regions[4]. In addition, the major
disease-causing death in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is
still severe sepsis, with a mortality rate of about 10% -48%[5].
At present, the treatment of sepsis is still based on symptomatic
treatment, including empirical antibiotic anti-infection, regulation of
coagulation dysfunction, protection of dysfunction of important organs,
fluid infusion, and vasopressor drugs to stabilize hemodynamics, but it
can not achieve precise treatment [6,7,8]. Sepsis
itself is a complex internal molecular mechanism, which has drawn an
interconnected and huge disease network (multiple genes, multiple
protein functions, and multiple signaling pathways). Just like the
complex balance of the human body itself, it is difficult to break the
human body’s ecological balance only by changing one or several goals.
Therefore, we can treat such complex diseases as sepsis, cancer, and
cardiovascular diseases through different ways of multi-target diseases.
Network pharmacology shows the complex network relationship of disease
target drug function pathway through a biological network, gradually
promoting the transformation of the development mode of a single target
drug to the overall development mode of the drug[9]. The emergence of network pharmacology is to
help us better understand the multiple mechanisms of action of drugs.
The use of multi-omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics) theory,
combined with powerful database retrieval and computer modeling
technology will help us to develop drugs for the treatment of complex
diseases and better understand the complex biological mechanisms of
diseases, To truly cure such complex diseases as sepsis from the
molecular tissue organ organism level [10,11].