Admission Pentraxin-3 Level Predicts Severity of Community-Acquired Pneumonia Independently of Etiology

Pentraxin-3 (PTX3) is a nonspecific marker of disease severity; however, PTX3 data from community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) patients are lacking.

An observational, prospective study of CAP patients was conducted in 2016. Plasma PTX3 levels are determined with quantitative ELISA. The primary endpoint is diagnosis of severe CAP (SCAP); the secondary endpoint is hospital mortality or discharge from the hospital.

Among 188 enrolled patients, 88 are diagnosed with SCAP, and 17 died during the hospital stay. Admission PTX3 levels are higher in patients with high CURB-65 (confusion, uremia, respiratory rate, blood pressure, age ≥65 years) or Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) scores (p < 0.0001 for both) and are unaffected by etiology. PTX3 demonstrate good performance in predicting both SCAP in CAP patients (AUC = 0.847) and 30-day mortality of CAP patients (AUC = 0.796). PTX3 combined with CURB-65 improve prediction performance (p = 0.0379). Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analysis confirm ≥33.52 ng mL^-1 PTX3 as an independent predictor of 30-day survival.

Admission levels of PTX3 are useful for predicting severity of CAP, independent of possible pathogens. PTX3 can improve prognostic accuracy of severity scores. Detection of PTX3 on admission might be useful for clinical judgment.

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT03093220, Date of registration: March 28, 2017 (retrospectively registered).