Justice

The Lopsided Geography of America's Bacteria-Related Deaths

Bacterial infections are killing more people in some parts of country, but not others.
UPenn

Dying from sepsis is not an exit most would choose. Virulent microbes marching through the body trigger an immune response, which causes a massive inflammation that can be marked with fever, confusion, "absent bowel sounds" and organ failure – a third to half of patients with severe sepsis perish from it, essentially due to the body poisoning itself.

Unfortunately, Americans are likely to hear more and not less about sepsis, because the condition seems to be on the upswing here. Reasons for that range from an older population that's more at risk to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. It's unnerving to think that something that killed about 35,500 people in 2011 and costs the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars annually could get worse because of our failure to prevent it.