Procalcitonin (PCT) is a protein synthetized by the thyroid C cells, inside which it is cut into calcitonin (CT) and catacalcin. It remains undetectable in serum in normal conditions. Its level increases during inflammation and in small cell lung cancer. There have been studies suggesting that the PCT level increases in medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). So far there have been no reports that w...

BACKGROUND Chronic low-grade inflammation is involved in chronic transplant dysfunction after renal transplantation. Procalcitonin (PCT), known to reflect microbial inflammation, may also reflect ongoing noninfectious chronic low-grade inflammation in organ parenchyma, including transplanted kidneys. We aimed to compare predictive performance of plasma PCT for development of graft failure in re...

BACKGROUND Early diagnosis of infection with the use of valuable markers leads to decreased mortality and morbidity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the value of procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) for detecting nosocomial infection in hospitalized patients without localizing signs. METHODS We conducted a prospective observational study on 150 hospitalized patients with fev...

INTRODUCTION Both C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) are accepted sepsis markers. However, there is still some debate concerning the correlation between their serum concentrations and sepsis severity. We hypothesised that PCT and CRP concentrations are different in patients with infection or with no infection at a similar severity of organ dysfunction or of systemic inflammatory r...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the procalcitonin (PCT) changes in two different high-dose colistin regimens in the treatment of multi-drug resistant MDR gram negative infections in ICU patients. Method: This is a prospective study of adult ICU patients with bacteremia and ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) caused by MDR gram negative pathogens. Patients were assigned to t...

Objectives To assess the kinetics of procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in pediatric patients who required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and to analyze its relationship with morbidity and mortality. Patients and methods Prospective observational study including pediatric patients who required ECMO. Both PCT and CRP were sequentially drawn before ECMO (P0) and until ...

[Purpose] Glenohumeral posterior capsule tightness possibly relates to posterior capsule thickness (PCT). The purpose of the current study was to analyze the relationships between PCT and glenohumeral range of motion (ROM) in horizontal adduction (HAdd) and internal rotation (IR). [Subjects and Methods] This study recruited 39 healthy collegiate baseball players. We measured PCT by using ultras...

Results: The average vaccination differences from pre-intervention to the intervention year were significantly larger in the intervention arm (n1⁄410 practices) than the control arm (n1⁄410 practices); for children aged 9–18 years (11.1 pct pts intervention vs 4.3 pct pts control, po0.05); for non-white children (16.7 pct pts intervention vs 4.6 pct pts control, po0.001); and overall (9.9 pct p...

BACKGROUND The inflammatory mediator procalcitonin (PCT) has previously been associated with prognosis in myocardial infarction, cancer and sepsis patients. The importance of PCT in the general population is currently unknown. Our aim was to assess the relationship between plasma PCT and the risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality in apparently healthy individuals with no previous histor...

Procalcitonin (PCT) is a protein, which has been initially described in 1993 as specific marker of bacterial infection . PCT has been reported to be useful in the diagnosis and the prognosis evaluation during sepsis or septic shock. PCT adds diagnostic value to the other infection biomarkers as CRP or WBC counts. A negative value of PCT rules out the presence of infections, which is helpful whe...