Introduction: Sepsis is a complicated host response to infection involving organ failure which ultimately causes death of the host. Procalcitonin (PCT) is an effective marker used to diagnose sepsis but until now, there has been no ideal marker for sepsis. Phospholipase A2 (PLA2) also increases infections; however, only a few studies have assessed its capacity as a biomarker to diagnose sepsis. Thus, we aimed to examine PLA2 and compare its diagnostic capacity and accuracy with PCT as a biomarker of sepsis.
Material and methods: Our study was a hospital-oriented cross-sectional study. Our study group included 80 patients of both sexes older than 18 years, meeting the quick sequential organ failure assessment (qSOFA) or systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria of ≥2, hospitalized in a tertiary care hospital in Karnataka, India from January 2021 to December 2021. Out of them, 59 were found to have sepsis. Samples of all the patients were evaluated for relevant parameters, and data were statistically analyzed using SPSS v21 running on Windows 10. The statistical significance was set at p-value <0.05.
Results: The mean PCT and PLA2 were significantly raised in sepsis patients compared to non-sepsis patients. Out of 59 septic patients, 45.76% had positive blood cultures, and 16.95% had positive urine culture reports. In blood cultures, the most common Gram-positive organism found was Staphylococcus, and the most common Gram-negative organism was Enterobacter. In urine cultures, Escherichia coli was the most common species. PLA2 was significantly higher in patients with bacterial etiology and Gram-positive cultures. The diagnostic capability, sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of PLA2 were demonstrably higher than those of PCT.
Conclusion: Our study proves that PLA2 is a much better and more efficient biomarker in sepsis than PCT. The diagnostic capacity and accuracy of PLA2 clearly surpass PCT, so using PLA2 in sepsis as a biomarker can help clinicians in deciding on timely and appropriate management to speed the recovery of patients.
Keywords: biomarker; comparison; phospholipase a2; procalcitonin; sepsis.
Copyright © 2023, Borra et al.