Spontaneous Sepsis in Adult Horses: From Veterinary to Human Medicine Perspectives

Sepsis is a life-threatening disease defined as an organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to an infection. Early diagnosis and prognosis of sepsis are necessary for specific and timely treatment. However, no predictive biomarkers or therapeutic targets are available yet, mainly due to the lack of a pertinent model. A better understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms associated with sepsis will allow for earlier and more appropriate management. For this purpose, experimental models of sepsis have been set up to decipher the progression and pathophysiology of human sepsis but also to identify new biomarkers or therapeutic targets. These experimental models, although imperfect, have mostly been performed on a murine model. However, due to the different pathophysiology of the species, the results obtained in these studies are difficult to transpose to humans. This underlines the importance of identifying pertinent situations to improve patient care. As humans, horses have the predisposition to develop sepsis spontaneously and may be a promising model for spontaneous sepsis. This review proposes to give first an overview of the different animal species used to model human sepsis, and, secondly, to focus on adult equine sepsis as a spontaneous model of sepsis and its potential implications for human and veterinary medicine.