Potential usefulness of C-reactive protein and procalcitonin determination in patients admitted for neurological disorders in rural Democratic Republic of Congo.

ABSTRACT: In low-resource hospitals of central Africa, neurological disorders are frequent and etiologies very diverse. The difficulty to identify invasive bacterial infections in this setting results in major antibiotic overuse. Biomarkers such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) may help discriminate these conditions. We retrospectively determined the concentrations of CRP and PCT in the sera of patients consecutively enrolled from 2012 to 2015 in an etiological study on neurological disorders at the rural hospital of Mosango, Democratic Republic of Congo. Invasive bacterial infection had been diagnosed by the demonstration of a bacterial pathogen in cerebrospinal fluid or blood cultures or the presence of radiological pneumonia. Sera of 313 (89.2%) and 317 (90.3%) of the 351 enrol

SUBMITTER: Bottieau E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6820716 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature