Background: Procalcitonin (PCT) is an established marker for severe systemic bacterial infection and sepsis. So far the relevance of PCT in healthy individuals or patients with local infections is unclear due to the lack of highly sensitive assays. The aim of our study was the characterization of a new sensitive PCT assay, the establishment of reference values and the assessment of diagnostic accuracy.
Methods: We assessed PCT values in 522 patients with different infectious and non infectious conditions and 410 healthy controls by a new coated tube sandwich chemiluminescence assay B.R.A.H.M.S ProCa-S (2 step assay, time to result 2.5 hours).
Results: The lower detection limit was 6.0 ng/L, with a functional assay sensitivity below 7 ng/L. Samples above 250 ng/L gave excellent correlation to the LUMItest PCT (r = 0.98, p < 0.0001). There was no high dose hook effect up to a concentration of 21,300 ng/L. The 410 healthy controls had a median concentration of 12.7 ng/L (95% CI: 12.6-14.7 ng/L). 65 controls had non-detectable PCT values (defined as 5 ng/L). The 2.5th percentile of the normal population was 5 ng/L and the 97.5th percentile was 46.7 ng/L. ROC plot analysis resulted in an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.90. The optimal decision threshold was at 50 ng/L, with a sensitivity for infection of 77.8% and a specificity of 98.5% (positive predictive value 97.7%, negative predictive value 84.9%). There was a highly significant (p < 0.0001) difference in the PCT median between healthy individuals and patients with infections (e.g. pneumonia, peritonitis) but not non-infectious controls (e.g. pregnancy, autoimmune disease).
Conclusions: The new PCT assay is 30 times more sensitive than the established routine assay LUMItest PCT, thus allowing for the first time PCT detection in healthy individuals. First results indicate that the assay is suitable to differentiate local bacterial infections from other non-infectious diseases.
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Alzheimers Res Ther
January 2025
Department of Radiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA, Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Background: Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) can study the susceptibility values of brain tissue which allows for noninvasive examination of local brain iron levels in both normal and pathological conditions.
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Materials And Methods: A total of 321 subjects were enrolled in this study.
J Orthop Surg Res
January 2025
Department of Hand-Foot Microsurgery, Shenzhen Nanshan People's Hospital, The 6th Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University Health Science Center, Shenzhen, China.
Background: Steroid-induced osteonecrosis of the femoral head (SIONFH) is a universal hip articular disease and is very hard to perceive at an early stage. The understanding of the pathogenesis of SIONFH is still limited, and the identification of efficient diagnostic biomarkers is insufficient. This research aims to recognize and validate the latent exosome-related molecular signature in SIONFH diagnosis by employing bioinformatics to investigate exosome-related mechanisms in SIONFH.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Vet Res
January 2025
Department of Large Animal Diseases and Clinic, Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw, 02-787, Poland.
Background: Elevated BHB levels are hypothesized to influence hepatic antioxidant enzyme expression and activity, contributing to oxidative response. However, the impact of BHB between 0.8 and 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Pregnancy Childbirth
January 2025
School of Medicine, The International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200030, China.
Background: Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is the most common liver disorder associated with pregnancy and is usually diagnosed based on high serum bile acid. However, the pathogenesis of ICP is unclear. Ferroptosis has been reported as an iron-dependent mechanism of cell death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Public Health
January 2025
Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of MalayaUniversiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia.
Background: Effective and feasible large-scale interventions are urgently needed to reverse the current rise in childhood obesity. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a multicomponent intervention program, MyBFF@school, on anthropometric indices and body composition metrics among overweight and obese adolescent schoolchildren in Malaysia.
Methods: This is a cluster randomized controlled trial which involved schoolchildren aged 13, 14 and 16 years old from 15 out of 415 government secondary schools in central Peninsular Malaysia which were randomly assigned into six intervention (N = 579 schoolchildren) and nine control (N = 462 schoolchildren).
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