HANSEATIC PRIZE FOR INTENSIVE CARE MEDICINE

Beaming faces marked the award ceremony on Thursday, February 15, 2024, at the Symposium Intensive Medicine + Intensive Care in Bremen. Every year, the Scientific Association for the Promotion of Clinically Applied Research in Intensive Care Medicine(WIVIM e.V.) awards the Hanseatic Prizes with the help of a jury for outstanding commitment and work in the field of intensive care medicine.

At the 34th Symposium on Intensive Medicine + Intensive Care, Dr. Christian Nußhag from the Heidelberg Kidney Center was awarded the Hanse Prize for his work"suPAR links a dysregulated immune response to tissue inflammation and sepsis-induced acute kidney injury", which deals with risk assessment in sepsis.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) due to sepsis leads to life-threatening conditions that cannot be adequately diagnosed using conventional renal function indicators.

The study investigated the suitability of serum suPAR values to differentiate the severity and progression of sepsis-induced AKI (SI-AKI) in 200 critically ill patients according to the Sepsis-3 criteria.The soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) is a molecule from the innate immune system that plays a role in inflammatory organ damage.
suPAR enabled accurate classification of disease severity of SI-AKI with better prediction of renal replacement therapy (RRT) and mortality compared to established renal biomarkers. Patients with suPAR levels above 12.7 ng/mL had the highest risk of RRT or death.
suPAR deficiency protected mice from SI-AKI, while suPAR-overexpressing mice had more severe kidney damage and were less likely to survive.

Overall, suPAR allows independent staging of SI-AKI based on the innate immune system and provides improved risk assessments over time.

The prize money amounts to € 5,000.00 and is donated by the Fresenius Foundation Bad Homburg.