title: Admission neopterin and interleukin 12 concentrations in identifying infections in adult cancer patients.
abstract: Differential diagnosis between infections and neoplastic fever is a common diagnostic problem. The utility of admission serum concentrations of neopterin and interleukin 12 (IL-12) was prospectively evaluated in this respect. The infection group (n=56) had a higher median neopterin value (12.8 nmol/l vs 4.0 nmol/l, P<0.001) and neopterin-to-IL-12 ratio (1.74 vs 0.11, P<0.001) than the non-infection group (n=36); the median IL-12 values were higher in the latter group (10.6 pg/ml vs 71.6 pg/ml, P=0.007). According to the area under the operating characteristics curves (AUC), especially neopterin (0.90), but also the neopterin-to-IL-12 ratio (0.79), was good at identifying bacteremia. However, in differentiating infections in general from neoplastic fever (n=10), the neopterin-to-IL-12 ratio was less powerful (0.64), though still better than neopterin (0.58) and clearly better than IL-12 (0.42). The present results show that the neopterin-to-IL-12 ratio, which reflects simultaneously both the ongoing infection and the tumour load, may have promising clinical implications for differential diagnosis between infections and neoplastic fever.
authors: Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland. raija.kallio@oulu.fi
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Kallio
authors: H M
authors: HM
authors: Surcel
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Bloigu
authors: H
authors: H
authors: Syrjälä
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D019540:Area Under Curve; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007239:Infections / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis*; D018664:Interleukin-12 / Q000097:blood*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000150:complications; D019798:Neopterin / Q000097:blood*
chemical_list: D018664:Interleukin-12; D019798:Neopterin