• Tao Jiang, Wen-Xian Ouyang, Yan-Fang Tan, Ying Yu, Xiao-Mei Qin, Hai-Yan Luo, Lian Tang, Hui Zhang, and Shuang-Jie Li.
• Department of Hepatopathy Center, Hunan Children's Hospital, Changsha, China.
• Clinics (Sao Paulo). 2024 Jan 1; 79: 100383100383.

BackgroundNeonatal Intrahepatic Cholestasis (NICCD), as the early-age stage of Citrin deficiency involving liver dysfunction, lacks efficient diagnostic markers. Procalcitonin (PCT) has been identified as a biomarker for infection as well as various organ damage. This study aimed to explore the potential of PCT as a biomarker for NICCD.MethodsIn a single-center retrospective case-control study. Serum PCT concentrations before and after treatment of 120 NICCD patients, as the study group, were compared to the same number of cholestatic hepatitis patients, as the control group. The potential value of PCT to discriminate NICCD from control disease was further explored using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis and compared to those of other inflammatory markers.ResultsThere was a significantly higher level of PCT in NICCD patients than in the control group. PCT concentrations were only weakly correlated with neutrophil counts and CRP levels (p ˂ 0.05). At a cut-off value of 0.495 ng/mL, PCT exhibited a significantly higher diagnostic value compared to other inflammatory markers for discriminating NICCD from the control, with a sensitivity of 90.8 % and specificity of 98.3 %.ConclusionPCT might be used as an initial biomarker to discriminate children with NICCD from another hepatitis disease.Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U.

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