Biomarkers in early diagnosis of sepsis.

Purpose of review. Sepsis is a complex pathology with a high morbidity and mortality rate. Many studies demonstrate that early diagnosis is crucial to survival. Sepsis is a difficult to diagnose disorder due to lack of specificity and sensibility of signs and symptoms and limitations of current microbial detection techniques. We review in this article the advantages and disadvantages of mainly used biomarkers for the diagnosis of systemic infections. Recent findings. In the last decades a large number of serum biomarkers have been proposed for clinical application with the main purpose of distinguishing between systemic inflammation and systemic infection. Their clinical usefulness and limitations are under reviewed. Summary. Along with clinical evaluation, sepsis biomarkers may improve the diagnostic evaluation of patients with systemic infections. Taking into account the actual diagnostic usefulness of each single biomarker, future research is needed to explore the benefit ofmultiple biomarkers panel.