Elevated plasmatic level of soluble IL-7 receptor is associated with increased mortality in septic shock patients

Purpose

Adjunctive immunoadjuvant therapies are now proposed in the treatment of septic patients that develop immune dysfunctions. However, a prerequisite is to identify patients at high risk of death that would benefit from such therapy. Knowing that rhIL-7 is a putative candidate for septic shock treatment, we evaluated the association between increased plasmatic level of soluble CD127 (sCD127, IL-7 receptor alpha chain) and mortality after septic shock.

Methods

sCD127 plasmatic level was measured in 70 septic shock patients sampled at day 1–2 (D1) and day 3–4 (D3) after the onset of shock and 41 healthy volunteers.

Results

Compared with survivors, non-survivors presented with significantly higher sCD127 concentrations at D1 and D3 (p < 0.001 and p = 0.002). At D1, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for sCD127 level association with mortality was 0.846 (p < 0.0001). Kaplan–Meier survival curves illustrated that mortality was significantly different after stratification based on D1 sCD127 level (log rank test, hazard ratio 9.10, p < 0.0001). This association was preserved in multivariate logistic regression analysis including clinical confounders (age, SAPS II and SOFA scores, odds ratio 12.71, p = 0.003). Importantly, patient stratification on both D1 sCD127 value and SAPS II score improved this predictive capacity (log rank test, p = 0.0001).

Conclusions

Increased sCD127 plasmatic level enables the identification of a group of septic shock patients at high risk of death. After confirmation in a larger cohort, this biomarker may be of interest for patient stratification in future clinical trials.