Patent ID: 8288108

Claim:
A method for in-vitro detection of sepsis in a blood sample of a human inpatient selected from the group consisting of a polytraumatized adult patient, an adult patient with pneumonia, and a prematurely born infant, the method comprising the following steps: i) extracting RNA from a blood sample of the human inpatient; ii) quantifying the RNA extracted during step (i), and transcribing and labeling the RNA extracted during step (i) to obtain a quantity of labeled cRNA, wherein for labeling a detectable marker is used, wherein said detectable marker is a fluorescence marker, dye marker or a radioactive marker; iii) fragmenting the labeled cRNA obtained according to step (ii) , and specifically hybridizing the labeled, fragmented cRNA, if present with polynucleotides on a microarray comprising DNA which corresponds to polynucleotides SEQ ID NO: 2 and SEQ ID NO: 6704 (Table 1) to obtain labeled, fragmented, hybridized cRNA; iv) obtaining control labeled and fragmented cRNA from a human with no sepsis wherein said control labeled fragmented cRNA is obtained in accordance with steps (i), (ii) and (iii), and hybridizing a known quantity of the control labeled, fragmented cRNA to said microarray in accordance with step (iii); v) determining a quantitative expression profile for both the human inpatient and the control labeled cRNA; and vi) comparing the expression profiles of step (v) of the human inpatient and of the control wherein statistically significant overexpression of the gene corresponding to SEQ ID NO: 2 and statistically significant underexpression of the gene corresponding to SEQ ID NO: 6704 for the human inpatient relative to the control is indicative of the patient's having sepsis.