Sepsis: An Evolutionary Perspective (Sepsis through the Eyes of a Microbe vs Clinical Sepsis through the Eyes of an Intensivist).

Abstract

“Change of gene frequency in population” is the most fundamental concept of evolutionary biology. Human sepsis is a quantitative biological war between microbial genes and human genes, fought through their respective phenotypes. The prize of this war is an increase of gene frequency. Stating that sepsis is caused by a dysregulated host response is missing one half of the septic syndrome. Clinicians may gain a different perspective into the many intricacies of sepsis by conceptualizing it as an adaptive evolutionary process, rather than an abnormal physiological state. Clinicians may also get a deeper perspective by seeing it as a genotypic evolutionary process of natural selection rather than a phenotypic pathophysiological event.How to cite this article: Kapadia FN. Sepsis: An Evolutionary Perspective (Sepsis through the Eyes of a Microbe vs Clinical Sepsis through the Eyes of an Intensivist). Indian J Crit Care Med 2020;24(12):1165–1168.