Objective: Sepsis is characterized by an excessive release of inflammatory cytokines. Cytokine dysregulation is pivotal to the pathophysiology of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). We aimed to analyze the incidence of IMIDs in patients who survived sepsis.
Methods: We performed a matched-cohort study using the National Medico-Administrative Hospital database in order to analyze the association between sepsis and incident IMIDs in 2020 in France. Sepsis was defined by the combination of at least one infection diagnosis code and one organ failure code. Patients with a first sepsis diagnosed in 2020 were randomly matched with patients admitted during the same period for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) with an exact matching procedure using age, gender, and comorbidities as matching variables. The main outcome was an IMID diagnosis in a 9-month follow-up period starting the first day of hospitalization for sepsis or AMI.
Results: In France, the incidence rate of IMIDs after a sepsis in 2020-analyzed in 62,257 patients-was of 7956 (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 7392-8520) per 100,000 patient-years. As compared to the AMI population, we observed an increased risk for IMIDs of 2.80 (hazard ratio [HR]; 95% CI [2.22-3.54]) starting from day 16 after admission in the sepsis population. The risk of IMIDs onset in sepsis survivors depended on the type of IMIDs and was higher for immune thrombocytopenia (5.51 [1.97-15.4]), autoimmune hemolytic anemia (HR 4.83 [1.45-16.1]), and antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis (4.66 [2.05-10.6]). Association between sepsis and IMIDs onset appeared well balanced across pathogen categories.
Conclusion: Our study shows a high incidence of IMIDs among sepsis survivors.
Keywords: immune-mediated inflammatory diseases; incidence; post-sepsis; sepsis.
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Internal Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Publication of The Journal of Internal Medicine.