Intermountain Medical Center doctor earns prestigious grant for continued sepsis research

MURRAY — A researcher at Intermountain Medical Center was recently awarded a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health for his work.

Samuel Brown, a doctor in the shock trauma intensive care unit, is studying ways the body controls heart rate and blood pressure in response to life-threatening sepsis infections. He will use the $600,000 grant to fund five years of his research — during which hundreds of patients will be studied — in hopes of discovering better ways of treating sepsis and particularly septic shock, according to IMC spokesman Jess Gomez.

He said each year, more than 750,000 Americans contract sepsis, which begins as an ordinary infection in the lungs or urinary tract and inflames. About 50 percent of sepsis patients end up dying.

"If we can better predict how patients will react to severe infection, we’ll have a better chance at treating people who develop sepsis," Brown said.

Brown's award is the latest success in a string of groundbreaking sepsis research and care being done at IMC and other Intermountain Healthcare facilities. Research leading up to Brown's aware was supported by the Easton Family Fund of the Deseret Research Foundation.

— Wendy Leonard