Speakers - 2025

Biography

Zhaowei Tong, MD, is a professor at Huzhou Central Hospital, the affiliated Huzhou hospital of the Zhejiang University School of Medicine. He has been working at the hospital for more than 20 years in the field of infectious diseases, including diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Research papers have been published in scientific journals. 

Abstract

Sepsis is a critical, life-threatening illness with high morbidity and mortality rates caused by an abnormal host response to the infection. WHO has identified sepsis as a major public health problem. There are 48.9 million people with sepsis worldwide in 2023, ultimately resulting in 11 million deaths, accounting for 19.7% of total deaths. In 2017-2019, it was reported that about 800,000 patients with sepsis died in China, accounting for 13.1% of the total deaths. Among them, about 228,000 patients with sepsis died during hospitalization, and the proportion of in-hospital deaths is increasing year by year. Sepsis often injures the intestinal mucosa, which in turn leads to bacterial translocation to induce infections. Sepsis exacerbates local and distal organ damage, resulting in multi-organ failure, which is closely related to the high mortality rate. For diagnosis and treatment of sepsis, it is urgent to elucidate the pathological mechanism of sepsis-induced intestinal injury and explore potential therapeutic targets.

To elucidate the composition of metabolites the underlying molecular mechanisms of sepsis, we conducted a prospective cohort study of patients with sepsis admitted to the intensive care unit. Serum specimens were collected at the time of admission, and the metabolic profile was detected by non-targeted metabolomics technology. The key metabolites were screened out by differential analysis and pathway enrichment analysis. We first used non-targeted metabolomics to test serum samples from 18 patients with sepsis and 12 healthy controls. A total of 1216 differential metabolites were identified, of which 836 metabolites were upregulated and 380 were downregulated in sepsis patients. In addition, the differential metabolites were mainly enriched in the caffeine metabolism pathway, ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter pathway, and D-amino acid metabolism pathway. Notably, all metabolites in the D-amino acid metabolic pathway, including L-glutamine, ornithine, L-histidine, L-lysine, D-glutamine, cis-4-hydroxy-D-proline and D-orinithine, were down-regulated in sepsis, with the fold of L-Histidine being down-regulated most significantly. L-Histidine has been shown to influence sepsis survival and be involved in maintaining endothelial barrier integrity. L-Histidine is an essential amino acid that has a certain auxiliary effect on the treatment of a variety of diseases, such as gastric ulcer, anemia, and arthritis. In the present study, receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis suggests that L-Histidine has the potential to serve as a biomarker of sepsis. To preliminarily explore the role of L-Histidine in sepsis, we simulated an inflammation model of Caco-2 cells in vitro, resulting in L-Histidine improving LPS-induced Caco-2 cell damage. Therefore, L-Histidine may have a protective effect on intestinal barrier damage caused by sepsis and may be used as a potential method for treatment of sepsis.