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Sensitive Immunoluminometric Assay for the Detection of Procalcitonin

¹ Research Department, B·R·A·H·M·S AG, Biotechnology Centre, D-16761 Hennigsdorf/Berlin, Germany

^aauthor for correspondence: fax 49-3302-883-451, e-mail n.morgenthaler@brahms.de

Procalcitonin (PCT) and other calcitonin precursors are detectable in various conditions leading to systemic inflammatory response syndrome. Among them are pancreatitis (1)(2), burns (3), polytrauma (4), and most importantly, bacterial infection (5). PCT reflects the severity of bacterial infection and has been used as a marker for the diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock of bacterial origin (6)(7)(8)(9)(10). The usual two-sided chemiluminescence assay [immunoluminometric assay (ILMA)] for PCT has a functional assay sensitivity (FAS) of 300 ng/L. This FAS is sufficient for the monitoring of septic patients in intensive care units, but the usefulness of the present ILMA in the usual hospital or outpatient setting is limited. Furthermore, except for an initial report on PCT and other calcitonin precursors in a few controls (8), it has not been possible to define the range of PCT in healthy individuals or to determine whether increased PCT exerts a pathophysiologic role (11)(12)(13).

We developed a new PCT assay with a >30-fold lower FAS compared with the established ILMA and measured PCT values in 500 healthy controls.

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References

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