The Diagnostic Value of Procalcitonin Versus Other Biomarkers in Prediction of Bloodstream Infection.
BACKGROUND
We compared the diagnostic utility of procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), and hematological markers, including white blood cell count (WBC), neutrophils (NEU), percentage of neutrophils (NEU%), lymphocytes (LYM), neutrophil-lymphocyte count ratio (NLCR), and platelet count (PLT) for predicting bloodstream infection (BSI), which was confirmed by blood culture (BC).


METHODS
A retrospective analysis was conducted for 1807 inpatients. The level of PCT, CRP, blood cells, and blood culture results were compared between the positive blood culture group and negative blood culture group; each indicator was analyzed in the performance of bacterial BSI diagnosis by drawing ROC curves.


RESULTS
Blood cultures were positive in 230 patients; hence, the prevalence of bacteremia was 12.7%. There were significant differences in the median value for each marker between positive group BCs and negative group BCs (p < 0.05). The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC-AUCs) of PCT, CRP, WBC, NEU, NUE%, LYM, NLCR, and PLT for discriminating positive BCs from negative BCs were 0.811, 0.654, 0.612, 0.634, 0.684, 0.595, 0.682, and 0.633 respectively. PCT concentrations of gram-negative (14.94 ng/mL, IQR 2.93  48.76) were significantly higher than gram-positive (4.74 ng/mL, IQR 1.22  17.5) and fungal (1.47 ng/mL, IQR 0.66  35.34).


CONCLUSIONS
PCT proved to be the most reliable predictor of BSI, second were NEU% and NLCR. A higher PCT level was found in patients with a gram-negative BSI compared to gram-positive BSI and fungal BSI.
Ya-Ping
YP
Pan
Ya-Ping
YP
Fang
Yuan-Hong
YH
Xu
Zhong-Xin
ZX
Wang
Ji-Lu
JL
Shen
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D019540:Area Under Curve; D016470:Bacteremia / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000382:microbiology; D001431:Bacteriological Techniques; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D002097:C-Reactive Protein / Q000032:analysis; D002116:Calcitonin / Q000097:blood*; D005260:Female; D016469:Fungemia / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000382:microbiology; D006801:Humans; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010976:Platelet Count; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012189:Retrospective Studies
D015415:Biomarkers; D002116:Calcitonin; D002097:C-Reactive Protein