• Hector R Wong, Kathleen D Liu, Kirsten N Kangelaris, Patrick Lahni, and Carolyn S Calfee.
• Division of Critical Care Medicine, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Research Foundation, Cincinnati, OH, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA. Electronic address: hector.wong@cchmc.org.
• J Crit Care. 2014 Oct 1; 29 (5): 718-22.

PurposeWe recently identified interleukin-27 (IL-27) as a sepsis diagnostic biomarker in children. Here we assess IL-27 as a sepsis diagnostic biomarker in critically ill adults with systemic inflammatory response syndrome and sepsis.MethodsIL-27 and procalcitonin (PCT) were measured from plasma samples in three groups: no sepsis (n = 78), pulmonary source of sepsis (n = 66), and non-pulmonary source of sepsis (n = 43). Receiver operating characteristic curves and classification and regression tree methodology were used to evaluate biomarker performance.ResultsIL-27 did not discriminate effectively between sepsis and sterile systemic inflammatory response syndrome in unselected patients. The highest area under the curve (AUC) was 0.70 (95% C.I. 0.60 - 0.80) for IL-27 in subjects with a non-pulmonary source of sepsis. A decision tree incorporating IL-27, PCT, and age had an AUC of 0.79 (0.71-0.87) in subjects with a non-pulmonary source of sepsis. Compared to children with sepsis, adults with sepsis express less IL-27.ConclusionsIL-27 performed overall poorly in this cohort as a sepsis diagnostic biomarker. Combining IL-27, PCT, and age reasonably estimated the risk of sepsis in subjects with a non-pulmonary source of sepsis. IL-27 may be a more reliable sepsis diagnostic biomarker in children than in adults.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

37 keywords...

hide…