Abstract
Sputum procalcitonin levels in patients admitted to hospital with acute exacerbations of bronchiectasis.
Highlights
Bronchiectasis is a chronic, debilitating disease typified by productive cough, airway inflammation and repeated respiratory tract infections
Procalcitonin is a precursor of calcitonin, a hormone with hypocalcaemic effects that is secreted in response to hypercalcaemia and in healthy individuals, procalcitonin is synthesised by the calcitonin gene (CALC-I).[6,7]
Patients were eligible for inclusion in the study if they were at least 18 years of age, had a diagnosis of noncystic fibrosis bronchiectasis based on a high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) scan of the chest, and had been admitted to hospital with an acute exacerbation of bronchiectasis
Summary
Bronchiectasis is a chronic, debilitating disease typified by productive cough, airway inflammation and repeated respiratory tract infections. It is characterised by persistent airway neutrophilic inflammation and airway infection is a major driver for neutrophil recruitment.[1,2] Multiple biomarkers have been developed to investigate ongoing airway inflammation including sputum neutrophil elastase, sputum cell counts and cytokines, serum C-reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and fibrinogen.[3,4,5]. The use of procalcitonin as a biomarker in bronchiectasis has been limited with small numbers of study participants These studies have investigated the relationship of serum procalcitonin in stable and unstable patients with bronchiectasis. Serum procalcitonin was found to be low in the majority of patients with bronchiectasis and was not correlated with other systemic inflammatory markers such as CRP.[10,11,12] We hypothesised that measurement of sputum procalcitonin would more accurately assess airway inflammation or persistent bacterial infection and provide a better airway biomarker for bronchiectasis
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