Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Pediatrics

Sepsis is among the most common causes of death in hospitals. It arises from the host response to infection. The use of new biomarkers is a promising tool to assess risk mortality among septic children in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs). Adrenomedullin (ADM), a peptide with 52 amino acids, has bactericidal activity, which is further enhanced by its regulation and modulation of complement activity. Not surprisingly, serum levels of ADM were shown to be increased in sepsis. The aim of the study was to confirm prognostic and diagnostic value of pro-adrenomedullin marker in critically ill septic children. This study was conducted on 40 patients who were admitted at pediatric intensive care unit from January 2016 to July 2016 diagnosed as sepsis in addition to 40 patients who were enrolled as control group. History taking and routine laboratory investigations were taken for cases. Serum proadrenomedullin level was measured for both cases and controls by ELISA. Our study showed that the level pro-adrenomedullin is higher in cases than controls. Its level ranged from 3.6 to 248 ng / l with mean 46.47±9.87 among studied cases while ranged from 3.8 to 9.7 ng/l with mean 5.73±0.2 in controls where there is significant statistical difference between cases and controls (p value <0.001).However, no correlation between level of pro-adrenomedullin and outcome (p value 0.720). The level of pro-adrenomedullin was higher in cases than control, thus proved that it is diagnostic of sepsis but can{u2019}t be used as prognostic factor as no correlation between its level and outcome.Future studies including larger number of patients are recommended and daily follow-up measurements are warranted to validate our results to study prognostic value of proadrenomedullin

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