Observational studyMedicine2018
Serum procalcitonin levels can be used to differentiate between inflammatory and non-inflammatory diarrhea in acute infectious diarrhea.
Observational study in Medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Procalcitonin as a Severity-Based Risk Stratification Marker in Pediatric Infectious Diarrhea: A Prospective Study from the Emergency Department.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Procalcitonin and C-Reactive Protein as Diagnostic Biomarkers for Bacterial Gastroenteritis: A Retrospective Analysis.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- The Prognostic Role of Serum Procalcitonin for Adult Patients with Acute Diarrhea in the Emergency Department.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Evaluation of non-invasive diagnostic tools for diarrhea: a systematic review of point-of-care tests and biomarkers.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2024Review
- Diagnostic value of serum procalcitonin and C-reactive protein in discriminating between bacterial and nonbacterial colitis: a retrospective study.Journal of Yeungnam medical science · 2023Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In this study, we assess the possibility of using procalcitonin levels to differentiate between inflammatory diarrhea and non-inflammatory diarrhea in acute infectious diarrhea.We reviewed the records of 1176 patients who had symptoms of diarrhea, fever (≥37.8 °C), and abdominal pain between March 2011 and May 2015. After applying exclusion criteria, a sample of 514 patients was considered for study. The patient sample was divided into Group A and Group B for inflammatory diarrhea and non-inflammatory diarrhea, respectively. The assessment involved comparing the laboratory characteristics with the clinical characteristics of the groups.The characteristics of Group A, such as white blood cell (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP), absolute neutrophil count (ANC), and procalcitonin levels, were relatively higher than those of Group B (P < .001 for Group A). A receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis revealed that the highest area-under-the-curve (AUC) value of procalcitonin (0.797; 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.760, 0.831]; P < .001), could be used to differentiate between the 2 groups. Procalcitonin exhibited a sensitivity and a specificity of 87.03% and 68.75%, respectively, at a 0.08 ng/mL cut-off level.Procalcitonin was a good candidate biomarker of inflammatory diarrhea than other inflammatory markers.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.