| Summary: | Several data support the view that impairment of the inflammatory-immune response
is a hallmark of severe sepsis and the level and time of recovery to
immunocompetence has a major impact on the clinical outcome of ICU patients.
Recent studies demonstrate that improvement of anti-tumour immune response by
targeting negative regulatory molecules, such as CD25, chronic T-lymphocyte
activation antigen 4, and programmed death-1 receptor (PD-1)/PD-1 L, offers
a novel opportunity to prevent or even reverse progression of tumour growth in
experimental models and patients. Likewise, severe sepsis is associated with
enhanced expression of those negative regulatory molecules, suggesting a novel
approach to reverse immunoparalysis in sepsis. Consequently, targeting negative
molecules in sepsis can reverse immunoparalysis and improve survival in
experimental sepsis, as shown by Chang and colleagues in a recent issue of
Critical Care. This opens new opportunities to overcome
overwhelming downregulation of the adaptive immune response to prevent and/or
improve recovery from sepsis.
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