Dr. Johannes Roth

 

Sepsis describes a common elusive medical syndrome that was redefined as a combination of infection that is associated with organ dysfunction. It was recently shown that sepsis outcome is determined by appropriate host metabolic adaptation in parenchymal tissues which includes a deregulated glucose homeostasis. To this end, it is unclear whether host parenchymal metabolic adaptation is altered in aged animals and whether or how this would affect glucose homeostasis and outcome. It is suspected that ageing is associated with a decreased adaptive capacity, disruption of glucose host homeostasis and subsequent increased disease severity in sepsis contrasting the paradigm, that ageing of the immune system causes overwhelming infection leading to death. In the AGNETA project, I will investigate this hypothesis using state-or-the-art sepsis models, metabolic cages and assessment of parenchymal and immune function as well as parenchymal metabolism.