Toll-like receptors in sepsis: a tale still being told.

Sepsis is a complex clinical situation responsible for thousands of deaths annually in intensive care units around the globe. Despite all our progress in providing medical care to critically ill patients, mortality of severe forms of sepsis did not decrease as expected. Part of this phenomenon is due to our defective understanding about the host immune response to aggression by a microorganism, including the part played by the pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs) in this process.