The following is a summary of “Blood calprotectin as a biomarker for infection and sepsis – the prospective CASCADE trial,” published in the May 2024 issue of Infectious Disease by Diehl-Wiesenecker et al.
Given calprotectin’s role in inflammation and the challenge of diagnosing sepsis in the emergency department, the CASCADE trial prospectively investigated its accuracy for identifying bacterial infections and predicting severity in a diverse group of patients with suspected infections.
Researchers conducted a prospective study to assess the accuracy of blood calprotectin in diagnosing bacterial infections, gauging disease severity, and predicting clinical decline in emergency department patients with suspected infections.
They evaluated the precision of blood calprotectin in diagnosing bacterial infections, measuring disease severity, and forecasting clinical deterioration in patients suspected of infections who were admitted to the emergency department.
The results showed that calprotectin’s Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUROC) for detecting bacterial infections stood at 0.90. Calprotectin’s AUROC for sepsis within 72 hours was 0.83, and for 30-day mortality, it reached 0.78. In patients with diabetes, calprotectin exhibited an AUROC of 0.94 for identifying bacterial infection.
Investigators concluded that calprotectin demonstrated promising accuracy across all evaluated endpoints, suggesting its potential use in emergency departments alongside existing markers to enhance the diagnosis and management of severe infections.
Source: bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-024-09394-x