ABSTRACT
Objective Toinvestigatetheclinicalvalueofhumanneutrophillipocalin(HNL)detectioninthedifferentialdiagnosis of bacterial and viral infections of elderly patients with acute respiratory infection .Methods 142 elderly patients with respiratory infection were divided the bacteria group (96 cases) and the virus group (46 cases) according to their infections ,42 healthy people in the corresponding period were enrolled as the control group .Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and highly sensitive dry chemi-cal particles enhanced immune turbidity assay were employed to detect their blood HNL and C-reactive protein(CRP) ,respectively , and virus-specific antibodies detection were performed simultaneously .Results Compared the blood HNL ,CRP levels and their positive rates of patients in bacteria group with those in the virus group ,control group ,respectively ,differences showed statistically significant(P0 .05) .Antibiotic treatment before and 24 ,48 and 72 hours after ,the concentrations of HNL were (216 .8 ± 64 .1) , (192 .0 ± 41 .2) ,(158 .0 ± 54 .5) and (87 .0 ± 12 .4)μg/L ,respectively ,while those of CRP were (50 .9 ± 40 .9) ,(46 .2 ± 18 .3) , (39 .6 ± 9 .6) and (12 .6 ± 9 .8) mg/L ,respectively .Sensitivity ,specificity ,positive predictive value and negative predictive value of HNL detection were 90 .6% ,90 .9% ,91 .5% and 89 .9% ,respectively ,which were higher than those of CRP (88 .5% ,85 .2% , 86 .7% and 87 .2% ,respectively) ,with statistically significant difference(P<0 .05) .Conclusion NHL detection possesses impor-tant significance in differential diagnosis between bacterial and viral infections of elderly patients with acute respiratory infection .