ArticleOpen forum infectious diseases2022
Accuracy of C-reactive Protein and Procalcitonin for Diagnosing Bacterial Infections Among Subjects With Persistent Fever in the Tropics.
Article in Open forum infectious diseases, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Serum Procalcitonin in Culture-Confirmed Melioidosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis with Narrative Evaluation of Clinical and Prognostic Implications.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Baseline Procalcitonin and C-Reactive Protein Levels in Asymptomatic Individuals From West Africa With and WithoutOpen forum infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Patterns of antibiotic use for acute febrile illness in resource-limited settings: a multicenter study in DR Congo, Kenya and Uganda.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Host-derived immune signatures as biomarkers to differentiate arboviral acute febrile illness from other causes of acute fever.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Point-of-care testing reduces antibiotic prescribing for adults with community-acquired pneumonia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Review
- Article
- Development of a host-signature-based machine learning model to diagnose bacterial and viral infections in febrile children.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: In low-resource settings, inflammatory biomarkers can help identify patients with acute febrile illness who do not require antibiotics. Their use has not been studied in persistent fever (defined as fever lasting for ≥7 days at presentation). Methods: C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) levels were measured in stored serum samples of patients with persistent fever prospectively enrolled in Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, and Sudan. Diagnostic accuracy was assessed for identifying all bacterial infections and the subcategory of severe infections judged to require immediate antibiotics. Results: Among 1838 participants, CRP and PCT levels were determined in 1777 (96.7%) and 1711 (93.1%) samples, respectively, while white blood cell (WBC) count was available for 1762 (95.9%). Areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve for bacterial infections were higher for CRP (0.669) and WBC count (0.651) as compared with PCT (0.600; Conclusions: In patients with persistent fever, CRP and PCT showed higher sensitivity for bacterial infections than WBC count, applying commonly used cutoffs for normal values. A normal CRP value excluded the vast majority of severe infections and could therefore assist in deciding whether to withhold empiric antibiotics after cautious clinical assessment.
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