Concomitant Reversal of Adrenal Insufficiency and Muscle Weakness to Enhance Recovery from Prolonged Critical Illness (AdrenalWeakness)

Sepsis, complicated surgery or extensive trauma cause hyperinflammation-induced critical illness which requires vital organ support in an intensive care unit (ICU) in order to avoid imminent death.

Although modern intensive care has reduced mortality, a large number of survivors continue to require such supportive care in the ICU sometimes for weeks or months.

Once in this prolonged phase, typical ICU-acquired morbidities such as lingering organ failure, muscle wasting and weakness and vasopressor- and ventilator-dependency become the main drivers of poor short- and long-term outcome irrespective of the initial diagnosis upon admission.

Research from our group has focused on two of these unresolved problems, namely ICU-acquired muscle weakness and ICU-acquired adrenal insufficiency, for which there is either no treatment or treatment has deleterious off-target effects that may fuel a vicious circle impairing short- and long-term recovery.

Today, intensivists see these conditions as two separate pathophysiological entities, an assumption we think is false.

We hypothesize that ICU-acquired adrenal insufficiency shares upstream underlying mechanisms with ICU-acquired muscle weakness, pathways that are currently unexplored and that can be manipulated with the potential to reverse both problems together. We will test this hypothesis via an experimental and a clinical track.

The proposal starts from a novel, controversial idea, developed via experiments in a unique, clinically relevant and validated mouse model of sepsis-induced critical illness and via the study of human patients, and aims to close the loop with a proof-of-concept randomized controlled trial.

Our ambition is to identify and test a novel compound, or combination of compounds, to concomitantly reverse adrenal insufficiency and muscle weakness in prolonged critical illness, while avoiding deleterious side-effects and aiming for synergy. Reaching this ambitious goal would represent ground-breaking progress.