The Relationship between Serum Endocan Levels and Childhood Community-acquired Pneumonia

Is Serum Endocan Level an Indicator of the Severity of Childhood Community-Acquired Pneumonia?

“…In the same study, no difference was found between the first and fourth days of serum endocan levels. 12 It was emphasized that it may be insignificant in deciding for hospitalization, but it may be related to disease severity and prognosis. 12 We know that ROC curve shows the characteristics of a diagnostic test by graphing the false-positive rate (1-specificity) and the true-positive rate (sensitivity) for various cutoff values.…”

“…25 Although the sensitivity and specificity values of endocan for CAP vary in the literature, the sensitivity and specificity were calculated as 43.3 and 96.4% in the study of Paketci et al 13 In the study of Hangül et al, while the sensitivity was 22.64%, the specificity was calculated as 98.18%. 12 The cutoff value was taken around 162 ng/mL in both studies. In our study, the cutoff value was calculated as 355 ng/mL and the sensitivity was 78.4% and the specificity was 76.7%.…”

“…12 It was emphasized that it may be insignificant in deciding for hospitalization, but it may be related to disease severity and prognosis. 12 We know that ROC curve shows the characteristics of a diagnostic test by graphing the false-positive rate (1-specificity) and the true-positive rate (sensitivity) for various cutoff values. The AUC is a popular measure for the accuracy of a diagnostic test.…”

“…11 There is a limited number of studies on the endocan level in childhood pneumonia. 12,13 Our aim in this study is to evaluate whether serum endocan level is an early inflammatory marker in the diagnosis, clinical severity and classification of childhood CAP and to investigate its correlation with CRP and PCT.…”

Should we have any predictive marker for estimating the severity of community-acquired pneumonia at admission?

“…Many research has been conducted to investigate the predictive usefulness of serum inflammatory biomarkers such as white blood cells (WBC) and their subtypes, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), interleukin-8, interferon-alpha, tumor necrosis factor, and kallsitatin, endocan, Mid-regional proadrenomedullin (MR-proADM), and kopeptin in CAP patients. Additionally, since some of these indicators are very costly and difficult to get, there is still a need for simple, specific, generally accessible, and affordable biomarkers in pneumonia patients (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9). Nowadays, in blood samples taken from peripheral blood, next-generation analyzers can automatically and extremely correctly count and assess the genuine immature granulocyte number (IGn) and percentage (IG%) (10)(11)(12).…”