Clinical Trial: Clinical Evaluation of Novel Biomarkers in Patients With Septicemia

Study Status: Recruiting
Recruit Status: Recruiting
Study Type: Observational




Official Title: Clinical Evaluation of Novel Biomarkers for Diagnosis, Therapy- Monitoring and Prognosis of Outcome in Patients With Septicemia

Brief Summary:

The protein ST2 is a member of the interleukin-1 receptor family. Blood concentrations of the soluble isoform of ST2 (sST2) are increased in inflammatory and heart diseases and are considered a prognostic marker in both. The Presage™ST2 assay was recently shown to meet the needs of quality specifications of laboratory medicine. Soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) levels reflect inflammation and elevated suPAR levels are found in several infectious diseases and cancer. Both sST2 and suPAR have recently been introduced as sensitive biomarkers for patients with septicemia. Both may be promising or even superior alternatives to currently established sepsis markers leading to an improvement of outcome in patients with septicemia. However, a clinical study which clarifies kinetics of values over time/possible correlation with causative pathogen/progress/deterioration of septic patients is urgently needed before these biomarkers can be established in clinical routine.

Primary study objectives To clinically evaluate sST2 and suPAR in patients with bacteremia /septicemia. To correlate results with causative bacterial organisms, response to or failure of antiinfective treatment, severity of clinical status as well as outcome.

To study the kinetics of the test results and to correlate the sST2/suPAR results with other well established infection markers (e.g. C-reactive protein, procalcitonin, blood counts).

Natural endpoints of the study will be patient's death or complete recovery.

This is an explorative study. To meet the objectives both novel biomarkers will be clinically evaluated in a cohort of 500 in-patients with septicemia at the University Hospital Graz. Starting the day a patient's blood culture tur