Introduction Severe Acute Pancreatitis (SAP) is a common but potentially lethal pathology due to the multiplicity and severity of complications that can occur at all stages of evolution.
For 12.2%, no lethal pathology was identified and CKS was considered as the underlying cause.
Of the 946 deaths, 65.9% were attributable to non-neoplastic conditions, 21.9% to malignancies, and 12.2% to KS (that is, deaths for which no lethal pathology was identified).
For 116 (12.2%) death certificates, there was no mention of any lethal pathology; thus KS was considered as the cause of death ('KS alone').
In these cases, the lethal pathology was considered as the underlying cause (as mentioned, CKS is rarely considered an actual cause of death); if more than one lethal pathology was written, we selected the most plausible cause based on an internationally accepted hierarchy of causes of death in ICD-9, which is used by ISTAT.
This suggests that the levels of IL-10 were protecting the majority of the infected Clecsf8−/− mice from lethal pathology, despite the enhanced inflammation and bacterial burdens that were present in their lungs.
For the remaining 116 of the 211 certificates, no lethal pathology was found and KS was considered as the cause of death (death 'due to' or 'caused by' CKS).
Mice with reduced HDAC1/2 activity (Hdac1 deleted and a single Hdac2 allele) develop a lethal pathology by 3-months of age, caused by neoplastic transformation of immature T cells in the thymus.
For certificates with both KS and another pathology as the underlying cause, we defined the lethal pathology as the cause, so that we may have underestimated the number of deaths for CKS alone and/or overestimated the number of deaths for other causes.
The latter data indicated that a lack of Treg or Treg-functional capacity was responsible for the lymphoproliferation and lethal autoimmune pathology in mutant mice.
