Nonutility of procalcitonin for diagnosing bacterial pneumonia in patients with severe COVID-19.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Cohen, Avi J. Glick, Laura R. Lee, Seohyuk Kunitomo, Yukiko Tsang, Derek A. Pitafi, Sarah Valda Toro, Patricia Ristic, Nicholas R. Zhang, Ethan Carey, George B. Datta, Rupak Dela Cruz, Charles S. Gautam, Samir
Copyright Year	2023
Abstract	ABSTRACTBackgroundPatients hospitalized with COVID-19 are at significant risk for superimposed bacterial pneumonia. However, diagnosing superinfection is challenging due to its clinical resemblance to severe COVID-19. We therefore evaluated whether the immune biomarker, procalcitonin, could facilitate the diagnosis of bacterial superinfection.MethodsWe retrospectively identified 185 patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 who underwent lower respiratory culture; 85 had evidence of bacterial superinfection. Receiver operating characteristic curve and area under the curve (AUC) analyses were performed to assess the utility of procalcitonin for diagnosing superinfection.ResultsThis approach demonstrated that procalcitonin measured at the time of culture was incapable of distinguishing patients with bacterial infection (AUC, 0.52). The AUC not affected by exposure to antibiotics, treatment with immunomodulatory agents, or timing of procalcitonin measurement.ConclusionStatic measurement of procalcitonin does not aid in the diagnosis of superinfection in severe COVID-19.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC9930745&blobtype=pdf
Page Count	1
Journal	European Clinical Respiratory Journal [Eur Clin Respir J]
Volume Number	10
DOI	10.1080/20018525.2023.2174640
PubMed Central reference number	PMC9930745
Issue Number	1
PubMed reference number	36815942
e-ISSN	20018525
Language	English
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
Publisher Date	2023-02-08
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Subject Keyword	COVID-19 procalcitonin critical care bacterial superinfection pneumonia biomarker
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine