Does sepsis affect children differently than adults?

Children are more at risk for developing sepsis than healthy adults who are not elderly. This is because a child's immune system is generally weaker than an adult's. Young children, newborns especially, are one of the higher risk groups for developing sepsis. Premature infants are particularly at risk, since they likely did not inherit any immunity from their mother, as full-term infants do. Sepsis attacks bodies that have the weak immune systems, which cannot fight off bacteria, so the difference between children and adults depends on the strength of their immune system.