{"doi":"10.1007/s40121-020-00358-7","title":"Prospective Observational Study to Determine Kinetics of Procalcitonin in Hospitalized Children Receiving Antibiotic Therapy for Non-Critical Acute Bacterial Infections","abstract":"INTRODUCTION: The kinetics of procalcitonin in pediatric patients with non-critical acute bacterial infections receiving appropriate antibiotic therapy are not well described. METHODS: We performed a single-center, prospective observational pilot study of children admitted to a tertiary care children's hospital who were receiving antibiotics for treatment of a non-critical acute bacterial infection, and we prospectively measured serial procalcitonin levels daily for 4 days during hospitalization. RESULTS: Among the 46 children with baseline procalcitonin levels enrolled in the study, procalcitonin kinetics followed a half-life of approximately 24 h in most patients. Procalcitonin declined faster than C-reactive protein over the first 48 h of appropriate antibiotic treatment. There was variation in biomarker levels among participants with the same infection type, especially in participants with bacteremia, musculoskeletal infection and skin/soft tissue infection. CONCLUSION: Utility of procalcitonin as a biomarker to follow every 24-48 h in non-critically ill children receiving antibiotic therapy for bacterial infections as an objective measure of clinical improvement is promising.","journal":"Infectious Diseases and Therapy","year":2020,"id":107609,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9208,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":516750,"name":"Jennifer Crook","orcid":"0000-0003-1915-3077","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":244233,"name":"Rendie McHenry","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":516751,"name":"Andras Szeles","orcid":"0000-0002-3744-0160","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105913,"name":"Natasha Halasa","orcid":"0000-0002-6381-1826","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":91688,"name":"Ritu Banerjee","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":435659,"name":"Sophie E. Katz","orcid":"0000-0003-4611-6861","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":28,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:12:34.898963Z","pmid":"33064296","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}