Can serum procalcitonin levels help interpret indeterminate chest radiographs in patients hospitalized with acute respiratory illness?

Background: Clinical diagnosis of pneumonia is difficult and chest radiographs often indeterminate, leading to incorrect diagnoses and antibiotic overuse.

Objective: To determine if serum procalcitonin (ProCT) could assist in managing patients with respiratory illness and indeterminate radiographs.

Design: Subjects were prospectively enrolled during 2 consecutive winters.

Utility of serum procalcitonin values in patients with acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a cautionary note.

Background: Serum procalcitonin levels have been used as a biomarker of invasive bacterial infection and recently have been advocated to guide antibiotic therapy in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, rigorous studies correlating procalcitonin levels with microbiologic data are lacking. Acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD) have been linked to viral and bacterial infection as well as noninfectious causes.

Exogenous procalcitonin evokes a pro-inflammatory cytokine response.

Objective And Design: Procalcitonin (ProCT) is increased in serum of septic patients and those with systemic inflammation. Endogenous levels of ProCT might influence the response of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs), independently of endotoxin, in clinical disease.

Subjects: Healthy human volunteers.

Gut barrier dysfunction in critically ill surgical patients with abdominal compartment syndrome.

Objectives: This study investigated the effects of intra-abdominal hypertension (IAH) and abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS) on gut barrier function in critically ill surgical patients.

Methods: A prospective observational cohort study on patients with severe acute pancreatitis or abdominal sepsis admitted to an intensive care or high-dependency unit. Intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) and plasma levels of immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgM antiendotoxin core antibodies (EndoCAb) and procalcitonin (ProCT) were measured serially.

Procalcitonin has bioactivity at calcitonin receptor family complexes: potential mediator implications in sepsis.

Context: Sepsis is a major cause of death in the United States and accounts for approximately 50% of the fatalities in intensive care units. Serum procalcitonin (ProCT) levels are markedly elevated in sepsis and correlate positively with severity of the illness and mortality, however, little is known about the biological activity of ProCT.

Objective: To explore the biological activity of purified human ProCT at the calcitonin (CT) family of receptors.

Interleukin-6, interleukin-8, and a rapid and sensitive assay for calcitonin precursors for the determination of bacterial sepsis in febrile neutropenic children.

Objective: Children with cancer often develop febrile illnesses after cytotoxic chemotherapy. Determining which children have serious bacterial infections in this vulnerable period would be valuable. We evaluated the ability of a rapid and sensitive assay for the concentration of calcitonin precursors (CTpr) as a sensitive diagnostic marker for bacterial sepsis in febrile, neutropenic children and determined the utility of measuring cytokines to improve the predictive value of this approach.

Early immunoneutralization of calcitonin precursors attenuates the adverse physiologic response to sepsis in pigs.

Objective: The 116 amino acid prohormone procalcitonin and some of its component peptides (collectively termed calcitonin precursors) are important markers and mediators of sepsis. In this study, we sought to evaluate the effect of immunoneutralization of calcitonin precursors on metabolic and physiologic variables of sepsis in a porcine model.

Design: A prospective, controlled animal study.

Pulmonary immunoreactive calcitonin in the African green monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops): Anatomic distribution.

The hormone calcitonin, which occurs predominantly within the C cells of the mammalian thyroid gland, is also found within the pulmonary endocrine cells of the epithelium of the tracheobronchial tree. A study was made of the distribution of immunoreactive calcitonin (iCT) in the African green monkey. Using two different region-specific antisera, the total respiratory iCT comprised 2.