Lactate: Supporting diagnosis and sepsis management

Sepsis is a leading cause of acute hospital mortality and commonly results in multi-organ dysfunction. Hyperlactatemia is very common in patients with sepsis and septic shock and is closely associated with poor prognosis. As a product of anaerobic glycolysis, lactate increases during hypoxia, stress and many critical illnesses. Latest research has shown a positive correlation between high lactate levels and increased mortality; the higher the lactate level, the worse the result.

Lactate has been found to be more useful for predicting the outcome of sepsis than common severity scores such as the Age and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II score and the Sepsis related Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score.

The third international consensus definition for sepsis and septic shock recently revised the definition of septic shock. A serum lactate concentration >2 mmol/L was added as key component in the definition of septic shock.

The DiaSys Lactate FS assay (Product code: 1 4001 ..) is used to measure the amount of lactate in plasma samples. The enzymatic UV test with lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) has a wide measuring range of 1 mg/dL (0.1 mmol/L) up to 120 mg/dL (13.3 mmol/L) and shows no significant interferences from blood components like bilirubin, lipemia and hemoglobin.

Singer M, Deutschman CS, Seymour CW, et al. The third international consensus definitions for sepsis and septic shock (sepsis-3). JAMA 2016;315:801-10.

Asati AK, et al. To Determine Blood Lactate Levels in Patients with Sepsis Admitted to a Respiratory Intensive Care Unit and to Correlate with their Hospital Outcomes. Int J Crit Care Emerg Med 2018;4:045.