• Jens Vikse, Brandon Michael Henry, Joyeeta Roy, Piravin Kumar Ramakrishnan, Krzysztof A Tomaszewski, and Jerzy A Walocha.
• Department of Anatomy, Jagiellonian University Medical College, ul. Kopernika 12, 31-034 Krakow, Poland.
• Int. J. Infect. Dis. 2015 Sep 1; 38: 68-76.

ObjectiveClinically, it is often difficult to differentiate between bacterial and viral aetiologies in adults with suspected meningitis. Several studies have demonstrated the potential use of serum procalcitonin (PCT) in making this differentiation. The aim was to pool these studies into a meta-analysis to determine the diagnostic accuracy of PCT.MethodsMajor electronic databases were searched for articles studying the use of serum PCT in the differentiation of bacterial and viral meningitis in adult patients. No date or language restrictions were applied. Data analysis was performed using Meta-DiSc 1.4 and MIX 2.0.ResultsNine studies (n=725 patients) were included in the meta-analysis. Serum PCT was found to be a highly accurate test for diagnosing meningitis. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) for PCT were 0.90 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84-0.94), 0.98 (95% CI 0.97-0.99), 27.3 (95% CI 8.2-91.1), 0.13 (95% CI 0.07-0.26), and 287.0 (95% CI 58.5-1409.0), respectively. PCT was found to be far superior to C-reactive protein, which had a pooled DOR of only 22.1 (95% CI 12.7-38.3).ConclusionsSerum PCT is a highly accurate diagnostic test that can be used by physicians for rapid differentiation between bacterial and viral causes of meningitis in adults.Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

18 keywords...

hide…