The role of procalcitonin in community-acquired pneumonia: a literature review.

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a significant clinical and public health problem. Recently, attention has been paid to the potential for procalcitonin (PCT) both to differentiate the diagnosis and to indicate the prognosis of pneumonia. The purpose of this literature review was to evaluate the eligibility of PCT for defining typical bacterial infections and for predicting severity and mortality in trials for CAP. The literature review suggests that PCT has the ability to supplement clinical information to determine whether or not the cause of the infection is likely to be bacterial. In addition, PCT seems to be superior to the most prevalent inflammatory biomarker C-reactive protein and also demonstrates a significant correlation between the current clinical scoring systems and actual mortality.