Organ system network analysis and biological stability in critically ill patients

BACKGROUND: Continuous coordination among organ systems is necessary to maintain biological stability in humans. Organ system network analysis in addition to organ-oriented medicine is expected to improve patient outcomes. However, organ system networks remain beyond clinical application with little evidence for their importance on homeostatic mechanisms. This proof-of-concept study examined the impact of organ system networks on systemic stability in severely ill patients. METHODS: Patients admitted to the intensive care unit of the University of Tokyo Hospital with one representative variable reflecting the condition of each of the respiratory, cardiovascular, renal, hepatic, coagulation, and inflammatory systems were enrolled. Relationships among the condition of individual organ systems, inter-organ connections, and systemic stability were evaluated between non-survivors and survivors whose organ system conditions were matched to those of the non-survivors (matched survivors) as well as between non-survivors and all survivors. We clustered these six organ systems using principal component analysis and compared the dispersion of the principal component scores of each cluster using the Ansari-Bradley test to evaluate systemic stability involving multiple organ systems. Inter-organ connections were evaluated using Spearman’s rank test. RESULTS: Among a total of 570 enrolled patients, 91 patients died. The principal component analysis yielded the respiratory-renal-inflammatory and cardiovascular-hepatic-coagulation system clusters. In the respiratory-renal-inflammatory cluster, organ systems were connected in both the survivors and the non-survivors. The principal component scores of the respiratory-renal-inflammatory cluster were dispersed similarly (stable cluster) in the non-survivors, the matched survivors, and the total survivors irrespective of the severity of individual organ system dysfunction. Conversely, in the cardiovascular-hepatic-coagulation cluster, organ systems were connected only in the survivors, and the principal component scores of the cluster were significantly dispersed (unstable cluster) in the non-survivors compared to the total survivors (P = 0.002) and the matched survivors (P = 0.004). CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that systemic instability was closely associated with network disruption among organ systems irrespective of their dysfunction severity. Organ system network analysis is necessary to improve outcomes in severely ill patients. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13054-019-2376-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.