Sepsis biomarkers: a review of the diagnostic value of presepsin

Sepsis is a prevalent syndrome with high morbimortality, so an efficient early diagnostic method is needed. Recent studies suggest that presepsin could be a potential biomarker to sepsis diagnosis and has a better performance than other more consolidated biomarkers, such as procalcitonin and CRP. This systematic review aims to develop assess the accuracy to sepsis diagnosis of the presepsin and compare with procalcitonin and C-reactive protein. A comprehensive systematic research was conducted in the PubMed and Virtual Health Library to collect studies published in the last two years that focused on presepsin diagnostic accuracy for sepsis. Eight studies were selected. All of them suggested that presepsin has some diagnostic value for sepsis. In four studies presepsin had a better performance than procalcitonin and in two studies presepsin performed better than CRP. Two studies did not show significant differences between presepsin and the other biomarkers. This review indicates that presepsin may have significant value for the early diagnosis of sepsis, corroborating to increase the efficiency of existing tools, such as CRP and procalcitonin. However, more studies are needed to confirm its efficiency as a single diagnosis’s marker.