The relationship between thyroid and adrenal hormone levels and the outcome of Sepsis patients

Background: Sepsis is a common clinical diagnosis. Knowing the outcome of these patients is very important because it alerts the physicians. The goal of this research is to find an easy, inexpensive and accessible way for this purpose and to study the correlation between thyroid hormones and Cortisol levels and the outcome of patients in sepsis.

Methods: In this study 55 sepsis patients were examined. Their 8 a.m. blood samples were studied in their first day admission for TSH, T3, T4, T3RU and Cortisol. Criteria for the outcome of these patients were the mortality in 28 days of admission and death was inappropriate and life was appropriate outcome. The hormones level of these two groups’ was compared. Findings were analyzed using SPSS version16, Χ2 test was employed for qualitative analysis of data and Leven and independent T-test were used for quantitative analysis of the data.

Results: Among 55 sepsis patients under study 17 patients died during 28 days and 38   patients remained alive. Cortisol level was higher in inappropriate outcome patients and there was a statistically significant correlation between worsening outcome of sepsis patients and their increasing hormone level (p<0.001). However, there was no statistically meaningful relationship between thyroid hormone levels, TSH and T3RU and outcome of sepsis patients.

Conclusion: Measurement of blood Cortisol level could be worthy for predicting the outcome of sepsis patients.