• Lifen Li, Zhiwen Zhu, Juan Chen, Bin Ouyang, Minying Chen, and Xiangdong Guan.
• The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
• Am. J. Med. Sci. 2013 Mar 1;345(3):178-84.

Introduction: The lack of specific clinical manifestations for sepsis frequently leads to delayed diagnosis. Identification of sensitive and specific indicators that can be easily assessed, accurately reflect infection severity and prognosis and are clinically important in the differential diagnosis of sepsis, is of great significance. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic value of soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1 (sTREM-1) in high selected, mostly postoperative patients with suspicion of sepsis.Methods: Fifty-two consecutive patients hospitalized in a surgical intensive care unit with suspicion of infection included 14 patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), 9 patients with sepsis, 14 patients with severe sepsis and 15 patients with septic shock. Within 12 hours after enrollment, plasma levels of sTREM-1, procalcitonin (PCT), tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein were measured and compared between subgroups to elucidate their diagnostic and prognostic values.Results: Plasma sTREM-1 levels were higher in patients with sepsis than in patients with SIRS (111.7 versus 64.1 pg/mL, P < 0.05), with sensitivity, specificity and a predictive value higher than those of PCT and TNF-α. Plasma sTREM-1 levels were significantly different between the sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock subgroups (P < 0.001). For the receiver operating characteristic for predicting death, the area under the curve of sTREM-1 was 0.861, similar to that of TNF-α, blood lactate and PCT (0.848, 0.719 and 0.706, respectively).Conclusions: In postoperative patients, plasma levels of sTREM-1 and TNF-α could differentiate sepsis from SIRS. sTREM levels also reflected the severity of sepsis and were noninferior for prognosis compared with other biochemical indexes.

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