The studies have reported that mean platelet volume may be a marker in the discrimination of upper and lower urinary tract infections. We investigated whether the mean platelet volume was a reliable indicator in upper and lower urinary tract infections.
One hundred and eighty-two patients between the ages of 1 month and 14 years who were diagnosed with urinary tract infection were included in this study. The mean platelet volume values, clinical and other laboratory characteristics of the groups were compared. The discriminative ability of each biomarker for patients with UUTI was evaluated by drawing receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for the biomarkers. All values of p < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.
The leukocyte count, C-reactive protein, and erythrocyte sedimentation rates of the patients with upper urinary tract infection were significantly higher than the patients with lower urinary tract infections (p < 0.001). However, there was no statistically significant difference in terms of the mean platelet volume values between patients with upper and lower urinary tract infection ([7.2 (1.3) vs. 7.2 (1.6) fL]; p = 0.79, respectively). The value of the area under the curve of MPV's p-value was > 0.05. However, p-values of CRP and ESR were significant in ROC analysis.
Our study showed that there was no significant difference in the mean platelet volume values between patients with upper and lower urinary tract infections. The use of mean platelet volume as an indicator of upper urinary tract infection is controversial.

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