Procalcitonin Guidance in Infectious Disease Management
Summary
Procalcitonin, a precursor of the hormone calcitonin, has emerged as a valuable biomarker for distinguishing bacterial from viral and non-infectious inflammatory states. Its rapid rise in response to systemic bacterial infection and its subsequent decline during recovery make it suitable for guiding both the initiation and cessation of antibiotic therapy. Clinical algorithms incorporating procalcitonin thresholds have demonstrated the capacity to reduce unnecessary antibiotic exposure, shorten treatment durations and support antibiotic stewardship programmes without compromising patient safety. Beyond antibiotic decisions, procalcitonin kinetics offer prognostic insights, correlating with severity of illness in sepsis and bloodstream infections. Advances in detection technologies are now facilitating more precise and timely measurements, broadening the practical applications of procalcitonin in diverse clinical settings. Ongoing research seeks to refine threshold values, integrate procalcitonin guidance into electronic decision support systems and assess cost-effectiveness across healthcare economies.
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Procalcitonin Guidance in Infectious Disease Management publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in procalcitonin guidance in infectious disease management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Procalcitonin: a peptide precursor of calcitonin that rises specifically in bacterial infections and serves as a dynamic biomarker for diagnosis, prognosis and therapy guidance.
Antibiotic stewardship: coordinated strategies to optimise antibiotic prescribing, minimise resistance development and improve patient outcomes.
Immunoassay: analytical techniques that use antigen–antibody interactions to detect or quantify target molecules, widely employed in biomarker measurement.
References
- Usefulness of procalcitonin at admission as a risk-stratifying biomarker for 50-day in-hospital mortality among patients with community-acquired bloodstream infection: an observational cohort study. Biomarker Research (2023).
- Progress in Procalcitonin Detection Based on Immunoassay. Research (2024).
- Procalcitonin-guided antibiotic therapy may shorten length of treatment and may improve survival—a systematic review and meta-analysis. Critical Care (2023).
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