Sepsis and the immunometabolic inflammatory response
Samuel N. Paul, Isabell Nessel, Zudin Puthucheary, Siân M. Henson
Abstract
Sepsis is a life-threatening syndrome characterised by dysregulated immunity, inflammation and metabolic disruption. Despite improved care, it remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality, highlighting the need for improved mechanistic insight. Immunometabolism has emerged as a framework for understanding sepsis pathophysiology. Conventional prognostic tools reflect downstream organ injury but not the metabolic states of immune cells. Emerging technologies now enable high-resolution profiling of immunometabolic changes and integrating these approaches may yield metabolic biomarkers capable of tracking immune function and refining diagnostics. This review summarises current knowledge of leukocyte metabolic dysfunction in sepsis and highlights how immunometabolic profiling can inform patient monitoring and advance biomarker-driven precision medicine.