Identification of S1PR3 gene signature involved in survival of sepsis patients

Background Sepsis is a life-threatening complication of infection that rapidly triggers tissue damage in multiple organ systems and leads to multi-organ deterioration. Up to date, prognostic biomarkers still have limitations in predicting the survival of patients with sepsis. We need to discover more prognostic biomarkers to improve the sensitivity and specificity of the prognosis of sepsis patients. Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) receptor 3 (S1PR3), as one of the S1P receptors, is a prospective prognostic biomarker regulating sepsis-relevant events, including compromised vascular integrity, antigen presentation, and cytokine secretion. Until now, no S1PR3-related prognostic gene signatures for sepsis patients have been found. Methods This study intends to obtain an S1PR3-associated gene signature from whole blood samples to be utilized as a probable prognostic tool for patients with sepsis. Results We obtained an 18-gene S1PR3-related molecular signature (S3MS) from the intersection of S1PR3-associated genes and survival-associated genes. Numerous important immunity pathways that regulate the progression of sepsis are enriched among our 18 genes. Significantly, S3MS functions greatly in both the discovery and validation cohort. Furthermore, we demonstrated that S3MS obtains significantly better classification performance than random 18-gene signatures. Conclusions Our results confirm the key role of S1PR3-associated genes in the development of sepsis, which will be a potential prognostic biomarker for patients with sepsis. Our results also focus on the classification performance of our S3MS as biomarkers for sepsis, which could also provide an early warning system for patients with sepsis.