Procalcitonin and other biomarkers in COVID-19

[2020-07-01]

Procalcitonin in Emergency Department Patients With Suspected COVID-19
Presentation  by Dr. Charles Cairns

On using biomarkers (classifiers) to distinguish between causes of acute inflammation (infectious vs non infectious, bacterial vs viral, co-infections) with emphasis on procalcitonin. Procalcitonin is elevated in severe covid, but not in non-severe (95% of cases) 
5:37 inflammatory response over the time course of infection / injury recovery 
12:15 sepsis survivors vs. sepsis non-survivors gene expression profile shows marked difference 
16:54 procalcitonin (PCT) is a prohormone of calcitonin ; elevated PCT levels indicate bacterial infection accompanied by systemic inflammatory reaction 
24:28 nice diagram of events in SARS-CoV-2 infection 
25:09 another really nice diagram { seems to indicate that antibody dependent enhancement can occur in the course of a single infection, rather than during a re-infection } 
29:11 laboratory parameters in covid-19 patients 33:10 angiogenesis in in lungs from covid-19 or flu (H1N1) D-dimer may be laboratory correlate of angiogenesis; { probably more directly correlated to hypoxia inducible factor, but I guess d-dimer is something more routinely measured } 
34:51 non-survivors: elevated high LDL, high PCT, increased ferritin, elevated IL-6 
35:55 review of PCT in covid-19 
37:13 summary of presentation
"we need to understand the role of bacterial super infection in patients"



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