Figure 1.

Flowchart of patient enrollment. A total of 676 patients were admitted to the ICU during the study period, and among them, 422 patients were identified as having severe infection. However, many patients had associated chronic immunocompromising diseases or drug use or acute exacerbations of chronic infections and needed to be excluded. Finally, 26 patients with sepsis were enrolled, and 18 patients with similar critical scores that were sex- and age-matched non-septic patients were enrolled as the controls.