Calprotectin as a sepsis diagnostic marker in critical care: a retrospective observational study

Background Diagnosing sepsis in critical care remains a challenge due to the lack of gold-standard diagnostics. Calprotectin (S100A8/A9) has been proposed as a diagnostic marker to identify sepsis in critically ill patients. This study evaluated the diagnostic performance of calprotectin and C-reactive protein (CRP) to distinguish between sepsis and non-sepsis on intensive care unit (ICU) admission. Methods Admission biobank blood samples from adult patients admitted to four ICUs (2015-2018) were used to analyse calprotectin and CRP. All adult patients were screened retrospectively for the sepsis-3 criteria at ICU admission. The diagnostic performance of calprotectin and CRP was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results We included 4732 patients, of whom 44% had sepsis. Calprotectin levels were higher in sepsis (p < 0.001). The area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC) to diagnose sepsis was 0.61 for calprotectin compared to 0.72 for CRP (p < 0.001). Among microbiological subgroups of sepsis patients, fungal sepsis had the highest level of calprotectin. Conclusions The diagnostic performance of calprotectin in identifying sepsis patients at ICU admission was inferior to that of CRP.