A Comparative Study of the Effectiveness of Serum C-reactive Protein and Serum Pentraxin-3 Levels in the Diagnosis and Follow-up of Neonatal Sepsis

Abstract

Aim:Neonatal sepsis is a disease with multisystemic involvement accompanied by bacteremia in the first 28 days of life and in which the pathogen micro-organism spreads to different systems via the blood. Laboratory tests with high sensitivity and specificity are needed for the early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of pentraxin 3 in neonatal sepsis.Methods:This prospective clinical study was performed between November, 2015, and March, 2016, with 49 newborns diagnosed with sepsis and under monitoring at the neonatal intensive care unit and with Tollner sepsis scores of 5 or above and with 35 healthy neonates. Blood was collected from every patient diagnosed with sepsis for complete blood count, C-reactive protein, blood culture and pentraxin 3 measurements.Results:No significant difference was determined between the patient and control groups in terms of birth weight or gender. C-reactive protein, leukocyte, and pentraxin 3 levels were found to differ significantly between the healthy newborns in the control group and the septic patients. A significant correlation was observed between pentraxin 3 levels and serum C-reactive protein levels (r=0.44, p<0.05). The area under the curve was statistically significant at logistic regression analysis (area: 0.782).Conclusions:The data from our study show that pentraxin 3 may represent a valuable marker in the differential diagnosis of neonatal sepsis.

Keywords

• c-reactive protein
• newborn
• pentraxin
• sepsis