Evaluating the discriminating capacity of cell death (apoptotic) biomarkers in sepsis

The authors of this journal article state that sepsis biomarker panels that provide diagnostic and prognostic discrimination in sepsis patients would be transformative to patient care. They assessed the mortality prediction and diagnostic discriminatory accuracy of two biomarkers reflective of cell death (apoptosis), circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA), and nucleosomes. They say that to their knowledge, this is the first head-to-head comparison of cfDNA and nucleosomes in diagnosing sepsis and predicting sepsis-related mortality. Both cfDNA and nucleosome concentrations demonstrated a modest ability to distinguish sepsis survivors and non-survivors and provided additive diagnostic predictive accuracy in differentiating sepsis from non-infectious SIRS when integrated into a diagnostic prediction model including PCT and APACHE II. They conclude that a sepsis biomarker strategy incorporating measures of the apoptotic pathway may serve as an important component of a sepsis diagnostic and mortality prediction tool.

Source: Current Awareness Service for Health (CASH) - December 28, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news