**2.5 Risk factors**

Most risk factors for sepsis mainly rely on the patient's predisposition to infection. The main groups of patients are but not limited to; young or old age, patients with immunosuppressive diseases (e.g., AIDS) or ones taking immunosuppressive medications, cancer patients, alcoholics, patients with indwelling catheters, or other patients that have altered skin integrity all predispose them to infection [2, 21]. Age, sex, race, or ethnic groups have an influence on the incidence of severe sepsis. It is seen that sepsis mainly occurs in infants and elderly people, in males and African Americans rather than females Caucasians respectively [19, 22].
