ArticleBMC infectious diseases2022
High procalcitonin levels associated with increased intensive care unit admission and mortality in patients with a COVID-19 infection in the emergency department.
Article in BMC infectious diseases, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Society of Critical Care Medicine and the Infectious Diseases Society of America Guidelines for Evaluating New Fever in Adult Patients in the ICU.Critical care medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Human bocavirus 1 viremia-associated pediatric sepsis with a triphasic urinary course: a case report.Translational pediatrics · 2026Article
- Endothelin-1 in combination with CRB-65 enhance risk stratification in COVID-19 patients.Infection · 2025Article
- Biochemical and Hematological Predictors of Mortality in Thai Patients with COVID-19.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Regulation of inflammatory lung injury and repair by transforming growth factors.American journal of physiology. Lung cellular and molecular physiology · 2025Review
- Interferon-Stimulated Genes and Immune Metabolites as Broad-Spectrum Biomarkers for Viral Infections.Viruses · 2025Review
- The prognostic role of cardiac and inflammatory biomarkers in extubation failure in patients with COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome.Annals of intensive care · 2025Article
- Molecular insights into the bidirectional link between anxiety and COVID-19: a combined clinical and bioinformatics approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Role of Procalcitonin as a Prognostic Biomarker in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients: A Comparative Analysis.Biomarker insights · 2025Article
- Evaluation of Serial Procalcitonin Levels for the Optimization of Antibiotic Use in Non-Critically Ill COVID-19 Patients.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
- Utility of Serum Procalcitonin and Its Clearance in Predicting Outcomes in COVID-19 Patients.Cureus · 2024Article
- A machine learning strategy to mitigate the inappropriateness of procalcitonin request in clinical practice.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Proteomic and transcriptomic profiling of brainstem, cerebellum and olfactory tissues in early- and late-phase COVID-19.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
- Ginseng and ginsenosides on cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases; Pharmacological potentials for the coronavirus (COVID-19).Journal of ginseng research · 2024Review
- Identification of Factors Associated with Mortality in the Elderly Population with SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Results from a Longitudinal Observational Study from Romania.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
- The significance of monitoring respiratory sample cultures and polymerase chain reaction tests for detecting bacterial pathogens in severely and critically ill patients with COVID-19.African journal of thoracic and critical care medicine · 2024Article
- Immunological and biochemical biomarker alterations among SARS-COV-2 patients with varying disease phenotypes in Uganda.BMC infectious diseases · 2023Article
- Our Experience with SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Acute Kidney Injury: Results from a Single-Center Retrospective Observational Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
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8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPatients with a severe COVID-19 infection often require admission at an intensive care unit (ICU) when they develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Hyperinflammation plays an important role in the development of ARDS in COVID-19. Procalcitonin (PCT) is a biomarker which may be a predictor of hyperinflammation. When patients with COVID-19 are in the emergency department (ED), elevated PCT levels could be associated with severe COVID-19 infections. The goal of this study is to investigate the association between PCT levels and severe COVID-19 infections in the ED.
methodsThis was a retrospective cohort study including patients with a confirmed COVID-19 infection who visited the ED of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, between March and December 2020. The primary outcome was a severe COVID-19 infection, which was defined as patients who required ICU admission, all cause in-hospital mortality and mortality within 30 days after hospital discharge. PCT levels were measured during the ED visit. We used logistic regression to calculate the odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) and corresponding area under the curve (AUC) of PCT on a severe COVID-19 infection, adjusting for bacterial coinfections, age, sex, comorbidities, C-reactive protein (CRP) and D-dimer.
resultsA total of 332 patients were included in the final analysis of this study, of which 105 patients reached the composite outcome of a severe COVID-19 infection. PCT showed an unadjusted OR of 4.19 (95%CI: 2.52-7.69) on a severe COVID-19 infection with an AUC of 0.82 (95% CI: 0.76-0.87). Corrected for bacterial coinfection, the OR of PCT was 4.05 (95% CI: 2.45-7.41). Adjusted for sex, bacterial coinfection, age any comorbidity, CRP and D-dimer, elevated PCT levels were still significantly associated with a severe COVID-19 infection with an adjusted OR of 2.11 (95% CI: 1.36-3.61). The AUC of this multivariable model was 0.85 (95%CI: 0.81-0.90).
conclusionHigh PCT levels are associated with high rates of severe COVID-19 infections in patients with a COVID-19 infection in the ED. The routine measurement of PCT in patients with a COVID-19 infection in the ED may assist physicians in the clinical decision making process regarding ICU disposition.
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