Hyperprocalcitonemia and Endothelial and Microcirculatory Dysfunction in Children With Sepsis and Septic Shock: Single-Center Observational Cohort Study in Colombia, 2021–2024
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the association between hyperprocalcitonemia and endothelial and microcirculatory dysfunction in children with sepsis and septic shock and clinical outcomes. DESIGN: A prospective observational cohort study, 2021-2024. SETTING: A tertiary PICU with 15 medical-surgical beds in a university hospital. PATIENTS: We included children with sepsis and/or septic shock who had serum procalcitonin measured at admission, 24 hours, and 48 hours, simultaneously with microcirculatory assessment using sublingual videomicroscopy and biomarkers of endothelial injury (syndecan-1, angiopoietin-2, and endocan). Hyperprocalcitonemia was defined as procalcitonin greater than 2 ng/mL. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: In 230 patients, 43.9% (101/230) had hyperprocalcitonemia at PICU admission. After adjusting for confounders, children with hyperprocalcitonemia, compared with those with normal procalcitonin, had higher adjusted odds ratio (aOR [95% CI]) of reduced capillary blood flow at 24 hours (aOR, 1.35 [95% CI, 1.08-1.72]) and 48 hours (aOR, 1.14 [95% CI, 1.04-1.24]) after admission. At 24 hours, children with hyperprocalcitonemia compared with those without hyperprocalcitonemia had higher median (interquartile range [IQR]) syndecan-1 levels (125.87 ng/mL [IQR, 49.56-224.30 ng/mL] vs. 107.71 ng/mL [IQR, 62.82-156.55 ng/mL], respectively; p < 0.01) and greater odds of angiopoietin-2 elevation (aOR, 2.28 [95% CI, 1.08-5.17]; p = 0.042). Hyperprocalcitonemia with severe endothelial/microcirculatory dysfunction was associated with fluid overload greater than 10% (aOR, 2.01 [95% CI, 1.06-3.80]; p = 0.033), multiple organ dysfunction (aOR, 1.87 [95% CI, 1.01-3.57]; p = 0.041), and mortality (aOR, 1.66 [95% CI, 1.06-2.61]; p = 0.022). We failed to identify differences in capillary density (4-6 µm), angiopoietin-2, or Endocan between children with and without hyperprocalcitonemia at PICU admission. CONCLUSIONS: Children with sepsis and septic shock with hyperprocalcitonemia represent a phenotype characterized by endothelial and microvascular dysfunction, which is associated with worse clinical outcomes. Our study suggests that preserving microvascular integrity may be a therapeutic target to reduce microcirculatory damage and improve outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".