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Article History

Received: 13 June 2019

Accepted: 10 September 2019

First Online: 7 October 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The protocol was approved by the following Ethics Committees:• Ethics Committee of ATTIKON University General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of Asklipieion General Hospital of Voula, Territory of Athens• Ethics Committee of “Center for Trauma Resuscitation- KAT” General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of “Evangelismos” General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of “Evgenideio” Hospital of Athens• Ethics committee of “Ippokrateion” General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of “G. Gennimatas” General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of “Laikon” General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of “Konstantopouleio-Aghia Olga” General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of “Korgialeneion-Benakion” General Hospital of Athens• Ethics Committee of “Sotiria” Athens General Hospital• Ethics Committee of “Thriasio” Elefsis General Hospital• Ethics Committee of “Aghios Dimitrios” General Hospital of Thessaloniki• Ethics Committee of “G. Gennimatas” General Hospital of Thessaloniki• Ethics Committee of “Aghios Pavlos” General Hospital of Thessaloniki• Ethics Committee of “Theagenio” Hospital of Thessaloniki• Ethics Committee of “Tzaneio” General Hospital of Piraeus• Ethics committee of University General Hospital of Alexandroupolis• Ethics Committee of University General Hospital of Ioannina• Ethics Committee of General Hospital of Korinthos• Ethics Committee of General Hospital of PtolemaidaThe patients were enrolled after written consent of themselves or their legal representative in the case of patients unable to consent.

: George Dimopoulos is an editorial board member for BMC Infectious Diseases.Evangelos J Giamarellos-Bourboulis has received honoraria (paid to the University of Athens) from AbbVie USA, Abbott CH, Biotest Germany, Brahms GmbH, InflaRx GmbH, MSD Greece, Pfizer Greece and XBiotech Inc. He has received independent educational grants from AbbVie, Abbott, Astellas Pharma, AxisShield, bioMérieux Inc., Inflammatix Inc., InflaRx GmbH, the Medicines Company and XBiotech Inc. He has received funding from the FrameWork 7 program HemoSpec and from the Horizon2020 Marie-Curie project European Sepsis Academy (granted to the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens).The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.