Methusalem Funding > Endocrine and metabolic aspects of organ failure in critical illness: perspectives for prevention and therapy
Endocrine and metabolic aspects of organ failure in critical illness: perspectives for prevention and therapy
Coordinator |
Prof. Greet Van den Berghe |
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Methusalem Group |
Prof. Miet Schetz |
Centre |
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Starting date |
October 1st 2008 |
Financing |
EUR 1.000.000 per year |
Summary
Many aspects of Critical Care Medicine , particularly the care of the prolonged critically ill, remain non-evidence based, even today. Failure of multiple vital organs and absence of recovery remain the most important causes of death in these patients, the exact pathophysiological pathways involved remaining incompletely understood. There is thus urgent need to address these questions by careful and high quality research. Our previous work has shown that preventing glucose toxicity to the cellular organelles that produce energy, the mitochondria, by infusing insulin, prevents kidney and liver failure, and protects the heart. However, while glucose control appears the active part of the intervention, insulin may also add direct protective effects in the presence of normoglycemia.
The overall objective is to expand our current translational research program on endocrine and metabolic pathways of organ failure by building further on the three arms of this program: patient – animal – bench. More specifically, we will conduct 3l investigator-initiated clinical intervention studies, complemented with various mechanism-oriented studies in experimental models of critical illness. We will focus concomitantly focus on clinical outcome (morbidity and mortality) and on mechanisms of action with an organ specific focus (central and peripheral nervous system, liver, heart, kidney, skeletal muscle, bone, adipose tissue). The results form this research is likely to provide important insights that will allow to develop new interventions for prevention or cure of vital organ failure in the critically ill.