Potentials of Presepsin as a Novel Sepsis Biomarker in Critically Ill Adults: Correlation Analysis with the Current Diagnostic Markers.

Background: Sepsis is a major cause of patient death in intensive care units (ICUs). Rapid diagnosis of sepsis assists in optimizing treatments and improves outcomes. Several biomarkers are employed to aid in the diagnosis, prognostication, severity grading, and sub-type discrimination of severe septic infections (SSIs), including current diagnostic parameters, hemostatic measures, and specific organ dysfunction markers. Methods: This study involved 129 critically ill adults categorized into three groups: sepsis (Se = 48), pneumonia (Pn = 48), and Se/Pn (33). Concentrations of five plasma markers (IL-6, IL-8, TREM1, uPAR, and presepsin) were compared with 13 well-established measures of SSI in critically ill patients. These measures were heart rate (HR), white blood count (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), lactate plasma concentrations, and measures of hemostasis status (platelets count (PLT), fibrinogen, prothrombin time (PT), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), international normalization ratio (INR) and D-dimer). Plasma bilirubin and creatinine served as indicators of liver and kidney dysfunction, respectively. Results: Promising roles for these biomarkers were found. The best results were for presepsin, which scored 10/13, followed by IL-6 and IL-8 (each scored 7/13), and the worst were for TREM-1 and uPAR (scored 3/13). Presepsin, IL-6, and IL-8 discriminated between the SSI sub-types, whilst only presepsin correlated with bilirubin and creatinine. uPAR was positive for kidney dysfunction, and TREM-1 was the only indicator of artificial ventilation (AV). Conclusions: Presepsin is an important potential biomarker in SSIs. However, further work is needed to define this marker's diagnostic and prognostic cutoff values.