Fatty acid binding proteins as biomarkers of disease severity and response to treatment in severe pneumonia required admission to intensive care unit

In our previous article, we investigated the clinical usefulness of urinary levels of fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs) in assessing the severity of pneumonia and in predicting the treatment response of pneumonia in patients required admission to respiratory intensive care unit (ICU) (1). The results indicated that urinary levels of FABPs including intestine-FABP, adipocyte-FABP and heart-FABP measured on the day 1 after admission to respiratory ICU were significantly lower in pneumonia patients without septic shock than in those with septic shock. After stepwise regression analysis, adipocyte-FABP was the independent factor. The patients were divided into improved and non-improved subgroups. The urinary levels of four types of FABPs measured on the day 7 after admission to respiratory ICU were significantly lower in patients with improvement than in those without improvement. Adipocyte-FABP was shown to be the only independent factor after stepwise regression analysis. Taken together, the results of our previous study highly suggested that adipocyte-FABP in urine might serve as a new biomarker for assessing the severity of pneumonia and for predicting treatment response of pneumonia in patients required admission to respiratory ICU. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the clinical relevance of urinary FABPs in severe pneumonia patients in particular in those required admission to ICU