Tackling the Sepsis ‘Beast’: New Treatment Aims to Save Lives

By Shannon McKenney

I am a survivor of a hat trick of septic infections. I am 51 now and I still struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, insomnia, fatigue and poor appetite. I keep an eagle eye out for the next organ dysfunction.

I don’t know why I’ve been spared three times, but I have this huge sense that I’m meant to do more. Somehow, I regained enough strength to tour and perform, and even received a Juno Award nomination in 2018. I got to live out my best life after circling the drain three times.

I am so full of gratitude that I have volunteered for the Sepsis Canada LiFTING Program. As a patient partner, the patient perspective has never been more valued than it is today. I now sit on four committees and am part of two Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded research projects and am awaiting funding on three more for which I have committed. Recently, I joined a research team at St. Michael’s Hospital that is working on treatments that could have worldwide implications.

This is my purpose now. I am lucky enough to have survived and have the opportunity to make positive change. My lived experience and 13 years of recovery is the journey that the medical community does not know enough about or understand.

My journey started in 2011, with a ruptured appendix (sepsis and appendicitis). I had just started a new job and didn’t want to call in sick, so I went to work until I collapsed from septic shock.

The appendicitis started on Saturday night. I got violently ill and thought I had food poisoning. I spent most of the night on the floor in our bathroom. My husband took me to the emergency department (ED) on Sunday, where I was diagnosed with the flu. Monday, I went to work an ashen grey. Tuesday afternoon, my appendix ruptured. I felt momentarily better and thought the worst had passed. Wednesday, I returned to work but my boss took me to the hospital shortly thereafter.

The triage nurse instantly took me seriously. The problem was I did not have a fever, and my blood work was fine. At least they gave me a morphine drip. Wheeeee!

My triage nurse was going home and saw me sitting in the ED. She was shocked to see me still there and immediately notified the doctor. When they finally looked at my CT scan, the doctors could not tell if my appendix or right ovary had ruptured. Thirty minutes later, I was in the operating room.

I never got better.

Next went my gallbladder. I started having seizures and vomiting in December 2013 and bee-lined to the hospital. This time, it was sludge in my common bile duct, and I was treated with an ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography). I was discharged but returned the next day with sepsis. I was so weak I could barely stand. I spent 18 days over Christmas and New Year’s in the hospital, mostly in the hallway. That was a tough one.

I was so weak I could barely stand.

I had read that once you get sepsis, your chances of getting it again are increased.

And so they were. The beast laid in wait until July 2019. It presented like kidney stones, and I was screaming in pain with an elevated temperature (sepsis and kidney stones). I had doctors examining me, imaging and blood tests, all trying to find the source of this episode.

Sepsis is deadly because it has many sources of infection; there is no one size fits all treatment.

Enter St. Michael’s Claudia dos Santos and Amin Ektesabi, who have developed a new treatment to block inflammation, supercharge the white blood cells’ ability to kill bacteria, and protect against heart and lung failure. Now they want to test it in preclinical trials – so they can move quickly to save lives.

“We have developed a new medication, using lipid nanoparticles – similar to the ones that were used to administer the COVID vaccine,” explains dos Santos. “We found that when we give this medication in our preclinical models, this reduces mortality, heart failure and important inflammatory mediators. It also improves lung function, preventing the development of severe acute respiratory distress because of sepsis, liver and kidney dysfunction. From our data, our drug is also helping white blood cells fight the infection.”

The treatment will be presented at Angel’s Den, Canada’s biggest medical research competition.

“This is a great opportunity for us to share more than 15 years of work with potential investors and the public at large,” says dos Santos. “Our next steps are to finalize our safety studies and to move the research toward the first human studies. Our work is important because results may be imminently transitioned to novel therapies that may improve the lives of patients suffering from this devastating disease.”

As for me, I have learned to trust my intuition and my “go time” symptoms. The survival instinct is strong and will keep you here if you listen!

P.S.: Don’t be afraid to ask, “Could it be sepsis?”

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Previously Published on healthydebate.ca with Creative Commons License

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Photo credit: iStock