Serum thioredoxin 1 levels in female patients with community‐acquired pneumonia

Abstract

Community‐acquired pneumonia (CAP) commonly causes acute respiratory failure with high mortality. Here, we report that in contrast to the serum HP, levels of Trx1 is significantly decreased in serum from patients with CAP, especially in serum from female CAP patients. The levels for Trx1 in serum samples from patients with CAP compared to healthy controls using an indirect ELISA assay method. We assess the correlations of Trx1 with haptoglobin (HP), a well‐known biomarker for CAP. The CAP detection ability of Trx1 and HP were evaluated using receiver‐operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Analysis of the ROC curves indicates that CAP detection ability of Trx1is comparable to that of HP. At the cut‐off point 0.3964 at A540nm on the receiver operating characteristic curve, Trx1 could well discriminate CAP from normal female controls with a sensitivity of 72.5%, specificity 89.8%, and area under the curve (AUC) 0.877+/−0.0395. Decreased serum levels of the Trx1 in female CAP patients were reversely correlated with the elevated serum levels of HP (P<0.05). Considering that elevated serum levels of Trx1 and HP in various diseases including carcinomas, the decreased serum Trx1 in case of female CAP patients may be helpful for the CAP‐specific diagnosis for female subjects. *This work was financially supported by project B0009735) funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy of Korea.