New York City-based Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai researched sepsis treatments.
Science reported their findings.
Here are five observations:
1. Researchers found small doses of topoisomerase I inhibitor, a cancer drug, can subdue an acute inflammatory reaction to infection while encouraging the body's protective defense.
2. One dose to three doses of a Top 1 inhibitor that is one-fiftieth the strength of normal chemotherapy protected 70 percent to 90 percent of mice from inflammatory storm death.
3. The drug treatment may stop sepsis and other hazardous infections.
4. The drug treatment also successfully stopped intense immune reactions against infections like influenza and Ebola.
5. Sepsis kills up to 500,000 Americans annually.
"These storms occur because the body does not know how to adjust the appropriate level of inflammation that is good enough to suppress and infection but doesn't harm the body itself," said Ivan Marazzi, MD, microbiology assistant professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
