Author Interviews, CDC, Infections / 10.09.2025
CDC Releases Progress and Opportunities from Sepsis Core Elements Program
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Kristina Betz MD, PhD
Measure Development and Validation Unit Lead, NHSN
Surveillance Branch
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
MedicalResearch.com: Would you briefly explain what is meant by sepsis?
i.e., how common is it, how serious, what are the major causes?
Response: Sepsis is a life-threatening medical emergency that happens when the body’s response to an infection causes vital organs to stop working properly. Sepsis is often caused by bacteria, but it can also happen because of other infections, like viruses such as COVID-19.
Sepsis is one of the main reasons people go to the hospital and can be very dangerous. In the United States, about 1.7 million adults go to the hospital each year because of sepsis. Sadly, about 350,000 of these people die in the hospital or are sent to hospice care.
Even if people survive sepsis, it can cause long-lasting problems. They might have new health issues, not be able to go back to work, need to go back to the hospital, or even die later on.
Source: Hospital Sepsis Program Core Elements | Sepsis | CDC, What Is Sepsis | Sepsis Alliance
Kristina Betz MD, PhD
Measure Development and Validation Unit Lead, NHSN
Surveillance Branch
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
MedicalResearch.com: Would you briefly explain what is meant by sepsis?
i.e., how common is it, how serious, what are the major causes?
Response: Sepsis is a life-threatening medical emergency that happens when the body’s response to an infection causes vital organs to stop working properly. Sepsis is often caused by bacteria, but it can also happen because of other infections, like viruses such as COVID-19.
Sepsis is one of the main reasons people go to the hospital and can be very dangerous. In the United States, about 1.7 million adults go to the hospital each year because of sepsis. Sadly, about 350,000 of these people die in the hospital or are sent to hospice care.
Even if people survive sepsis, it can cause long-lasting problems. They might have new health issues, not be able to go back to work, need to go back to the hospital, or even die later on.
Source: Hospital Sepsis Program Core Elements | Sepsis | CDC, What Is Sepsis | Sepsis Alliance
Maria Tan[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com:
Maria Y. Tian, MBS
Department of Medical Education
Geisinger College of Health Sciences
Scranton, Pennsylvania
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are severe, disabling conditions that are associated with substantial economic burden. Approximately one-third of patients have treatment-resistant schizophrenia, which clozapine is the only evidence-based therapy for. Clozapine also provides unique benefits, including reduced suicide risk, aggression, and all-cause mortality. Despite this, it has historically been underutilized due to concerns over adverse effects, required blood monitoring, patient adherence, and limited clinician training. Previous research in Medicaid populations had demonstrated marked state-level variation in use, but little was known about prescribing trends in the U.S. Medicare system, which covers nearly half of individuals with schizophrenia. This study analyzed Medicare Part D data from 2015–2020 to assess national and regional trends in clozapine prescribing and to identify states with significantly different prescribing patterns.
Dr. Donofry[/caption]
Shannon D. Donofry Ph.D.
Behavioral Scientist
B.A.Sc. in psychology/neuroscience
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus;
Ph.D, University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus
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Dr. Rancaño[/caption]
Katherine M. Rancaño, Ph.D
Associate Policy Researcher
RAND
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: GLP-1 medications were first used to help people with diabetes manage their blood sugar. Lately, they’ve become popular for helping people lose weight, too. Because of this, a lot more people have started using them. In our study, we asked over 8,000 adults from across the country about their use of GLP-1 medications and any side effects they had.
Dr. Dunbar[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Michael S. Dunbar, PhD
L. Levi[/caption]
Liran Levi, PhD student
Faculty of Medicine at Hebrew University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Motivated behavior is driven by a group of brain regions called collectively the reward system. This neural system is at the heart of every decision we make about our actions - it integrates information about the world and decides whether to perform a behavior or not based on the predicted reward/benefit. The key molecule in this process is dopamine - whenever we perform a behavior that provides a reward dopamine is released in the reward system and reinforces this behavior. Drugs of abuse exploit this system - they cause abnormally high levels of dopamine, and thus force the reward system to seek drugs constantly, even after prolonged withdrawal. From a neurobiological perspective, that is how we view substance dependence - the reward system drives people to seek for the reward.
Prof. Ruth Shemer[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com: What types of cells were used in the study, ie keratinocytes, muscle cells etc?
Response: The primary tissue used in this study was peripheral blood from over 300 healthy human donors (18-78 years old). To further understand how the methylation changes are associated with changes in blood cell composition, we also sorted immune cell types including neutrophils, monocytes, B cells, and T cells. For forensics applications, we also tested the clock on urine and saliva samples.
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Prof. Yuval Dor[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com: Does this study relate at all to telomere length?Response:
Response: No, this study does not investigate or reference telomere length. It focuses entirely on DNA methylation changes at few genomics regions, each covering multiple clustered DNA methylation sites, where methylation changes are indicative of chronological age, independently of telomere biology.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?
Response: - A single-molecule analysis using DNA sequencing, revealed that 
Dr. Campanella[/caption]
Gabriele Campanella, PhD
Assistant Professor
Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Lung cancer is the most lethal cancer in the US. Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common form of lung cancer with an incidence of over 100k per year in the US. EGFR mutations are common driver mutations in LUAD, and importantly, these mutations can be targeted by TKI therapy, which has high response rates. Because of this, EGFR testing via NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) is considered mandatory by guidelines for any LUAD diagnosis.
In high-resource settings, rapid EGFR testing is done while waiting for confirmation via NGS. This is because NGS takes about 2 weeks on average, while the rapid testing has a median TAT of 2 days. Early treatment decisions could be made based on the rapid test results. Rapid tests have some important drawbacks, most notably, it exhausts tissue. In lung cancer, tissue is scarce in the first place, and up to 25% of cases, after rapid testing there is not enough tissue for NGS. In those circumstances, patients have to be biopsied again, which adds unnecessary risk for the patient. Even worse, in some cases, the NGS is never done. A non-tissue-exhaustive computational biomarker could be used instead of the tissue-based rapid test.
