Sepsis Moves Fast
A New Test Moves Faster
Imagine waking up with what feels like the flu, and within hours, your body is shutting down. That’s sepsis. It kills more Americans every year than breast cancer, prostate cancer, and stroke combined. And it can happen to anyone, at any age.
What if a single blood test could tell your doctors — within 30 minutes — whether you’re on the brink of life-threatening organ failure or can safely go home? That test now exists. It’s called TriVerity™, and Stanford physicians are at the forefront in using it to save lives, spare unnecessary hospital stays, and treat patients faster and with greater precision than ever before.
Changing the Rules in the ER
In January 2025, the FDA cleared TriVerity for hospital use. Unlike traditional tests that can take hours or days, TriVerity measures a patient’s immune response directly from whole blood and produces three key scores:
- Bacterial infection likelihood
- Viral infection likelihood
- Illness Severity Score
Khatri leads conversations that connect data science, clinical care, and real-world impact in infectious disease research.
While infection scores help clinicians quickly identify the presence and type of infection, the Illness Severity Score estimates a patient’s risk of needing intensive care within seven days, as well as likelihood of organ failure, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, or death. In practice, it’s a fast, objective read on trajectory: Is this person getting worse or likely to remain stable?
For one recent patient who triggered a sepsis alert, TriVerity’s results showed they were not on a dangerous trajectory. Instead of an unnecessary hospital stay, they went home safely, saving cost, avoiding risk, and preserving hospital resources.
“This is exactly the kind of clinical decision point TriVerity is meant to clarify,” says Purvesh Khatri, PhD, professor of medicine at Stanford and co-creator of the test. “It’s not about replacing clinical judgment, but adding a layer of precision that helps physicians act with more certainty.”
“Having rapid diagnostic and prognostic data can drive earlier action… and that means more lives saved.” – Purvesh Khatri, PhD
The Stanford-Led Research Behind It
To develop the test, Khatri’s team analyzed more than 12,000 publicly available blood samples, identifying a unique immune dysregulation signature — a pattern that signals when the body’s inflammatory response is tipping from protective to harmful.
To make sure this signal was real and reliable, the team tested it against data from the Framingham Heart Study, a famous decades-long project that has tracked the health of thousands of people and shaped much of what we know about heart disease. Even when classic risks like smoking, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure were factored in, this immune signal still accurately predicted which people were more likely to die early.
That same immune warning now powers TriVerity’s Illness Severity Score. For emergency room (ER) doctors, it means a quick, objective check on whether a patient is in real danger or stable enough to safely go home — information that can save a life.
At Stanford, Purvesh Khatri, PhD, collaborates with colleagues to translate complex data into tools like TriVerity, now reshaping how clinicians manage sepsis.
Why It Matters for Everyone
For decades, more than 100 clinical trials have failed to uncover a one-size-fits-all treatment for sepsis. That’s because every patient’s immune system reacts differently. TriVerity helps tailor care by showing when aggressive treatment is truly needed and when it could actually cause more harm.
It also has the potential to:
- Guide enrollment in targeted clinical trials to test efficacy of different drugs
- Reduce unnecessary antibiotic use
- Prevent ICU overcrowding during public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic
Looking Ahead
Khatri envisions a future where immune-signature precision diagnostics move beyond the hospital, empowering earlier recognition and intervention for serious infections. “Having rapid diagnostic and prognostic data can drive earlier action,” he says, “and that means more lives saved.”
Related Spotlights
