Procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein serve as biomarkers of infection in patients with sepsis/bacteremia. The present study assessed the clinical characteristics of 280 patients with suspected sepsis who were admitted to Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hospital between January 2012 and December 2013. Among the patients, 133 and 147 were positive and negative for PCT, respecti...

OBJECTIVES To assess the levels of procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in children diagnosed with PFAPA (periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis, and cervical adenitis) during their febrile attacks. METHODS 23 patients with diagnosis of PFAPA included into the study prospectively during a three years period. In these patients, CRP and PCT values were recorded during 78 f...

Porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT) results from a metabolic block in heme synthesis at the level of uroporphyrinogen decarboxylase. We measured the activity of one of the enzymes preceding it in the heme biosynthetic pathway, porphobilinogen deaminase (PBGD; EC 4.3.1.8), in erythrocytes of 47 patients with symptomatic or asymptomatic familial or sporadic PCT. PBGD activity was significantly increase...

UNLABELLED Procalcitonin (PCT) has emerged as a marker of infection, a frequent complication in hemodialysis (HD). We analyzed PCT levels in chronic non-acutely infected HD subjects, assessed its correlation with inflammatory and nutritional markers and propose a PCT reference value for non-infected HD patients. In an observational cross-sectional study, 48 chronic HD patients and 36 controls w...

OBJECTIVES Procalcitonin (PCT) is a 13 kD protein of which plasma concentrations are strongly increased in inflammatory states. PCT concentrations are claimed to have a more powerful discriminatory value for bacterial infection than the acute phase proteins serum amyloid A (SAA) or C-reactive protein (CRP). The source of production and its mechanism of induction are unknown. We investigated the...

introduction: about one third of the world's population is infected with tuberculosis (tb) and each year, about 1.5 to 2 million people die from tb. procalcitonin (pct) is an inflammatory marker that its level has variable materials and methods: this conducted on patients with pulmonary tb. data were collected using a check list. the serum level of pct was measured by elisa test at the beg...

Whether the levels of procalcitonin (PCT) in the serum and synovial fluid are effective indicators for distinguishing septic arthritis (SA) from non-infectious arthritis remains controversial. The present study aimed to evaluate whether PCT levels in fresh serum or fresh joint fluid may be used in the differential diagnosis of SA from rheumatoid arthritis (RA), osteoarthritis (OA) and gouty art...