• J Microbiol Immunol Infect · Jun 2010

    Semi-quantitative procalcitonin test for the diagnosis of bacterial infection: clinical use and experience in Japan.

    • Hideto Oshita, Joji Sakurai, and Masakazu Kamitsuna.
    • Department of Respiratory Medicine, Chugoku Rosai General Hospital, Hiroshima, Japan.
    • J Microbiol Immunol Infect. 2010 Jun 1;43(3):222-7.

    Background/PurposeThe efficacy of the rapid semi-quantitative procalcitonin (PCT) test for the diagnosis of bacterial infection was evaluated in patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome.MethodsA retrospective observational study was performed from June to December 2008 at the Chugoku Rosai General Hospital, Japan. This study analyzed consecutive patients (both outpatients and inpatients) who developed systemic inflammatory response syndrome and whose PCT test was measured semi-quantitatively within 24 hours of onset, or at the first hospital visit. Based on the clinical diagnosis, the patients were divided into two groups. Group I comprised patients with a bacterial infection, and group II comprised patients with a non-bacterial infection, or non-infectious disease. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to evaluate the diagnostic value of the semi-quantitative PCT test kit, C-reactive protein levels and white blood cells counts for the detection of bacterial infections, and the areas under the resulting curves were compared.ResultsA total of 168 patients were included and divided into groups I (n=112) and II (n=56). Group I showed a significantly higher percentage of positive PCT tests (≥ 0.5 ng/mL) than group II (67.8%vs. 19.6%, p < 0.001). PCT showed a sensitivity of 67.8% [95% confidence interval (CI)=58.4-76.4] and a specificity of 80.4% (95% CI=67.6-89.8). The areas under the resulting curves for PCT (0.764) were significantly larger than those seen for C-reactive protein (0.650, p=0.02) and white blood cells (0.618, p=0.006).ConclusionThe semi-quantitative PCT test is as useful for distinguishing bacterial infection from other inflammatory diseases in common clinical practice as the quantitative PCT.Copyright © 2010 Taiwan Society of Microbiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…