Sepsis is defined as a systemic immune response syndrome with signs of infection. Excessive inflammation is induced by the recognition of pathogen-associated molecular patterns on invading microorganisms or danger-associated molecular patterns of damaged tissue by the cellular "first line of defense" and the complement system. This result consequently leads to the robust release of cytokines from phagocytes ("cytokine storm") to fight the infection. Although of benefit to the organism when acting locally, this pattern leads to a dramatic life-challenging event when occurring systemically (54) (55) (56) (57) (58) .