Host-response biomarkers for the diagnosis of bacterial respiratory tract infections

Saleh, M.A.A.E.W.; Garde, E.M.W. van de; Hasselt, J.G.C. van (2018)

Article / Letter to editor

Appropriate antibiotic treatment for respiratory tract infections (RTIs) necessitates rapid and accurate diagnosis of microbial etiology, which remains challenging despite recent innovations. Several host response-based biomarkers due to infection have been suggested to allow discrimination of bacterial and non-bacterial microbial RTI etiology. This review provides an overview of clinical studies that investigated the diagnostic performance of host-response proteomic biomarkers to identify RTI microbial etiology. Procalcitonin and C-reactive protein have been studied most extensively; whereof procalcitonin has demonstrated the strongest diagnostic performance compared to other biomarkers. Proadrenomedullin, soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1, neopterin and pentraxin-3 need more studies to confirm their diagnostic value. For syndecan-4 and lipocalin-2 currently insufficient evidence exists. Common limitations in several of the studies were the relatively small scale setting, heterogeneous patient population and the absence of statistical power calculation.

• All authors: Saleh, M.A.A.E.W.; Garde, E.M.W. van de; Hasselt, J.G.C. van
• Date: 2018-09-05
• Journal: Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
• Volume: 57
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 442 - 451
• DOI: doi:10.1515/cclm-2018-0682