[Predictive value of heparin binding protein for sepsis]

To investigate the predictive value of heparin binding protein (HBP) for sepsis.

From June 2019 to December 2020, 188 patients admitted to the department of emergency of Hunan Provincial People's Hospital were enrolled. The patients were divided into non-sepsis group (87 patients) and sepsis group (101 patients) according to Sepsis-3 criteria. Gender, age, white blood cell count (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), HBP, sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score, quick SOFA (qSOFA) score, modified early warning score (MEWS) and patients' recent medication history were recorded, the differences in the above indicators between the two groups were compared. The risk factors of sepsis were analyzed by Logistic regression. Spearman correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation between HBP, PCT, CRP and SOFA score to evaluate the predictive value of HBP, PCT and CRP for the severity of septic organ failure. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve) were drawn to evaluate the diagnostic value of HBP, PCT and CRP for sepsis.

Compared with the non-sepsis group, the sepsis group had significantly higher levels of HBP, PCT, CRP, WBC, SOFA score, qSOFA score, and MEWS [HBP (μg/L): 55.46 (24.57, 78.49) vs. 5.90 (5.90, 9.01), PCT (μg/L): 6.83 (1.75, 30.64) vs. 0.23 (0.12, 0.75), CRP (mg/L): 67.35 (26.23, 123.23) vs. 4.45 (2.62, 47.22), WBC (×10⁹/L): 11.84 (7.18, 16.06) vs. 6.58 (5.47, 8.99), SOFA score: 6 (4, 8) vs. 0 (0, 0), qSOFA score: 2 (1, 3) vs. 0 (0, 1), MEWS: 4 (3, 6) vs. 1 (0, 2)], the length of hospital stay was significantly prolonged [days: 10 (4, 17) vs. 0 (0, 7)], and the mortality was significantly increased [29.7% (30/101) vs. 4.6% (4/87)], with statistical significance (all P < 0.05). Correlation analysis showed that HBP, PCT and CRP were significantly positively correlated with SOFA score (r values were 0.60, 0.33, and 0.38, respectively, all P < 0.01), among which HBP had the strongest correlation, CRP was the second, and PCT was the weakest. Logistic regression analysis showed that HBP, PCT and CRP levels were independent risk factors for sepsis [odds ratio (OR) were 1.015, 1.094, 1.067, 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were 1.007-1.022, 1.041-1.150, 1.043-1.093, all P < 0.01]. ROC curve analysis showed that HBP, PCT and CRP all had some diagnostic value for sepsis [the area under ROC curve (AUC) were 0.92, 0.87, 0.80, 95%CI were 0.88-0.97, 0.82-0.92, 0.74-0.87, respectively, all P < 0.01]. Among them, the diagnostic efficacy of HBP was higher when the cut-off value was ≥ 15.11 μg/L, its sensitivity and specificity were 86.14% and 89.66%, respectively, which were higher than the sensitivity (81.19%) and specificity (80.46%) when the PCT cut-off value was ≥ 1.17 μg/L. However, CRP had the best sensitivity of 94.06% for the diagnosis of sepsis but lacked of specificity (63.22%).

HBP can be used as a biological indicator for predicting sepsis and can assess the severity of organ failure in septic patients.