• Emanuel Burri, Michael Manz, Claude Rothen, Livio Rossi, Christoph Beglinger, and Frank Serge Lehmann.
• Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University Hospital of Basel, Petersgraben 4, 4031 Basel, Switzerland. burrie@uhbs.ch
• Clin. Chim. Acta. 2013 Feb 1; 416: 41-7.

Background And AimsFecal calprotectin and lactoferrin are sensitive markers of mucosal inflammation. We compared three different assays in their ability to identify patients with organic intestinal disease.MethodsIn a post-hoc analysis of a prospective study, we examined 405 unselected patients with abdominal complaints referred for endoscopy to the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland. Calprotectin (EK-CAL, Bühlmann Laboratories, Switzerland; PhiCal, Calpro AS, Norway) and lactoferrin (IBD-Scan, Techlab, USA) were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. The presence of a clinically significant endoscopic finding was the primary endpoint of the study. Final diagnoses were adjudicated blinded to calprotectin values.ResultsThe prevalence of organic intestinal disease was 35.3%. Receiver operating characteristics analysis calculated an area under the curve (AUC) for EK-CAL of 0.918, which was significantly better than for PhiCal (AUC 0.842, P<0.001) and IBD-Scan (AUC 0.830, P=0.003) to identify patients with organic intestinal disease. Overall test accuracy was 88.1% for EK-CAL, 83.7% for PhiCal, and 81.3% for IBD-Scan. Optimal cut-off value calculated for PhiCal and IBD-Scan were lower than recommended by the manufacturer.ConclusionsMonoclonal testing of calprotectin is superior to both polyclonal calprotectin testing and fecal lactoferrin in identifying symptomatic patients with organic intestinal disease.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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