The confirmation of a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020 proved that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would become a worldwide health issue (1). The Brazilian situation was no different from other countries: there was pressure on the health system and health workers. According to an article published by former Brazilian Health Ministry members, the country has been preparing itself for the COVID-19 disease since January 10, 2020 (2), and in many cities and states, isolation protocols have been set up (3). Even so, the number of cases and deaths keep rising in the country, counting 514,849 official cases and 29,314 deaths on June 1, 2020 (4). Many adaptations are being made in the way society works. Medical training had to be adapted in this context. In many schools, the internship was interrupted while other educational activities were adapted to virtual learning environments, with the introduction of web-based activities and new teaching technologies (5,6). These resources, despite being already present in many schools, became the only way of teaching due to isolation protocols demanding many adaptations (7). In Brazil, on the same hand as what was proposed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (8), 1 st to the 4 th years of medical school had their on-site activities suspended. The 5 th and 6 th years, our internship students, are still going to their university-hospitals, as interns work as health-staff in many situations. Their engagement was endorsed by the Federal Government COVID-19 combat strategy (9), which suggests using the internship labor force for the epidemic combat, in similar ways that are proposed by others (10,11). At the same time, a provisory measurement taken by the president allowed medical students to graduate with 75% completion from their internship (12). In the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, graduation has been divided in four main educational strategies.
Sepsis is a serious and potentially lethal clinical condition characterized by dysregulated immune and systemic inflammatory responses (SIRS) to an infection. Although sepsis has a high mortality rate (reaching 25% in Europe and North America), the clinical interventions available are still limited. In the bottom of this exacerbation of the immune response, that evolves to immunosuppression and immune paralysis, lies epigenetic mechanisms. In sepsis, the balance between activated and repressed immune related genes is at lost, and to recover that epigenetic based drugs promises to be the future of sepsis treatment. Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDAC’s inhibitors) are drugs based in the epigenetic mechanism of acetylation and deacetylation of histones, and they have already been tested - phases three and four of clinical trials - as treatment for other diseases, such as multiple myeloma, and cutaneous t-cell lymphoma. Furthermore, experimental studies in sepsis models shows that HDAC’s inhibitors are a promising suppressor of the exacerbated inflammatory response. Therefore, as the recent works shows, epigenetic drugs should be considered a viable sepsis therapy in the future. The focus of this review is to present the most recent scientific advances in the basic and clinical areas of epigenetic as a sepsis treatment, opening opportunities for the use of epigenetic in treating this condition.
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