Photo Credit: Montgomery Martin

The following is a summary of “Demographic and regional trends of sepsis mortality in the United States, 1999–2022,” published in the April 2025 issue of BMC Infectious Diseases by Morrissey et al. 

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to analyze long-term demographic and geographical trends in sepsis-related mortality in the United States (US) from 1999 to 2022.  

They used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) national database to examine sepsis-related mortality differences. Age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMR) were computed, and the Joinpoint Regression Program was applied to identify mortality trends over time.  

The results showed that 4177,071 deaths occurred, with mortality rising across most demographic and geographic groups. Sepsis-related mortality remained relatively steady, with an age-adjusted mortality rate (AAMR) of 77.51 in 1999 and 76.1 in 2019. However, from 2019 to 2021, a 30.22% increase was observed, primarily due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) infections.  

Investigators concluded that demographic and geographical disparities had persisted, with men, non-Hispanic (NH) African Americans, NH American Indians and Alaskan Natives, and the census region south having worse AAMR, and that COVID-19 had contributed to approximately one-sixth of sepsis-associated deaths in the US between 2020 and 2022, accounting for most of the excess sepsis-associated mortality during the pandemic. 

Source: bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-025-10921-7