ArticleBMC infectious diseases2025
Performance of procalcitonin point-of-care tests in predicting bacterial causes of acute febrile illness in Northwest Ethiopia.
Article in BMC infectious diseases, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- The Role and Importance of Procalcitonin (PCT) Testing in Rational Antibiotic Prescribing and Antibiotic Stewardship Programs.Immunity, inflammation and disease · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveAntimicrobial resistance in sub-Saharan Africa is fueled by empiric antibiotic use due to the absence of diagnostic testing for bacterial infections. We aimed to assess the performance of qualitative, semiquantitative, and quantitative procalcitonin (PCT) rapid point-of-care (POCT) tests in identifying bacterial causes of fever among acute febrile patients.
methodsA total of 181 frozen serum samples from adults (aged over 15 years) were assessed via qualitative, semiquantitative, and quantitative procalcitonin tests. The agreement between the test methods was evaluated via kappa statistics. A composite reference test was created by combining the results from all the PCT methods, due to the absence of a reliable gold standard to verify bacterial infections and the unavailability of standard PCT references. Each test's diagnostic accuracy was compared with that of the reference test. Bacterial infections were determined on the basis of blood culture and qPCR for Borrelia and Rickettsia species.
resultsAll the PCT tests had substantial to near-perfect agreement with each other (kappa = 0.69-0.81) and compared with the composite reference standard (kappa = 0.68-0.97). All three PCT test methods demonstrated excellent diagnostic accuracy, with an AUC ranging from 0.91 to 0.99; (95% CI 0.86-0.98 p < 0.001), in predicting bacterial infections, although the sensitivity and agreement decreased significantly at higher PCT concentrations, measured by semiquantitative and quantitative tests.
conclusionsPoint-of-care PCT tests may be helpful tools for distinguishing bacterial from nonbacterial causes of acute febrile illness in low-resource settings, though further studies with larger sample sizes are warranted to validate these findings and optimize test interpretation across varying PCT levels. CLINICAL TRIAL: Not applicable.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.