Objective The purpose of this study was to compare the performances of and evaluate the agreement among glycated hemoglobin values analyzed by using National Glycohemoglobin Standardization Program-certified and International Federation of Clinical Chemistry-standardized analyzers. This cross-sectional study was conducted at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Department of Chemical Pathology from March 2019 to May 2019. Methods Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) was measured in the blood specimens from 100 patients on an ADVIA 1800 by a turbidimetric inhibitory immunoassay (TINIA), Sebia instrument by electrophoresis, and Bio-Rad Variant II Turbo system by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Quantitative variables were calculated as the mean ± standard deviation (SD). Precision and method comparisons were carried out according to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute recommendations. The results obtained from each analyzer were compared by correlation analysis. Method comparison was done by linear regression and Bland-Altman plots using the SPSS software version 24. Results The mean ± SD HbA1c values from TINIA, electrophoresis, and HPLC were 7.188% ± 1.89%, 7.164% ± 1.866%, and 7.160% ± 1.85%, respectively. The between-run coefficients of variation for TINIA, electrophoresis, and HPLC were 0.64%, 0.61%, and 0.60%, respectively. All 3 showed good correlation (TINIA, R2 = .994, P = .00; electrophoresis, R2 = .992, P = 0.00; and HPLC, R2 = .994, P = 0.00). Conclusion The good clinical agreements of HbA1c and strong correlations between analyzers indicate that these analyzers can be used interchangeably.

Objective: To compare the diagnostic accuracy of procalcitonin (PCT), C- reactive protein (CRP), total leukocyte count (TLC) and lactate in critically ill patients admitted with suspicion of sepsis. Methods: It was a cross sectional study conducted at the department of Chemical Pathology and Endocrinology AFIP, Rawalpindi, in collaboration with Medical and surgical intensive care units (ICU) of CMH Rawalpindi from January 2019 to December 2019. A total of 126 patients of both genders with age above 18 years and fulfilling the inclusion criteria of systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) were inducted in the study. Results: Out of 126 patients 82 (65%) patients have positive blood culture results. Male predominance was noted in patients with positive blood culture. Out of 82 patients with positive blood culture results 69(84%) patients have positive PCT results as well whereas 13(15%) patients with positive blood culture results have negative PCT values. 57(69%) patients had Gram negative bacterial infection and 25(30%) patients had Gram positive bacterial infection. Significant difference was noted between the medians of PCT in blood culture positive and blood culture negative group (p value< 0.05) whereas no significant difference was found between medians of CRP, TLC and lactate between blood culture positive and blood culture negative patients (p value > 0.05). ROC curve analysis of PCT, CRP and TLC were done, keeping blood culture as reference standard, PCT showed largest area under the curve (AUC) and clearly outperformed TLC and CRP. PCT showed AUC of 0.781 as compared to CRP and TLC, which was 0.568 and 0.617 respectively. PCT showed sensitivity of 93.9%, specificity of 47.7%, positive predictive value (PPV) of 77% and negative predictive value (NPV) of 80.8%. Conclusion: Higher NPV makes it a reliable marker for screening out sepsis in suspected cases. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.7.4183 How to cite this:Bibi A, Basharat N, Aamir M, Haroon ZH. Procalcitonin as a biomarker of bacterial infection in critically ill patients admitted with suspected Sepsis in Intensive Care Unit of a tertiary care hospital. Pak J Med Sci. 2021;37(7):---------.  doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.7.4183 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Objective: To determine the frequency of normoglycemia (NG), prediabetes and diabetes mellitus (DM) amongpatients having impaired random glucose (IRG) and establish the optimum cutoff of impaired random glucosefor the diagnosis of diabetes and prediabetes. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Rawalpindi and Combined Military HospitalQuetta, from Nov 2016 to Nov 2018. Methodology: Healthy individuals of both genders undergoing investigation for diabetes mellitus were enrolled through non probability consecutive sampling while patients with diabetes, pregnant, hospitalized, using concomitant medications (corticosteroids, immunosuppressive, chemotherapy) and those unable to complete oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) were excluded. Random plasma glucose (RPG) was determined and patients having impaired random glucose underwent oral glucose tolerance test, analysis being done on ADVIA1800®using hexokinase methodology. Results: Among the 280 study participants, majority were female {156 (57.5%) vs 124 (44.3%) male}. Mean age in male and female patients was 33.625 ± 3.34 years vs 35.150 ± 2.79 years with p-value 0.50 while mean IRG was 7.12 ± 1.47 vs 6.90 ± 1.17 mmol/L respectively with p-value 0.16 (statistically insignificant). Oral glucose tolerance test results showed NG in 61.8% (173), prediabetes in 24.6% (69) while diabetes was found in 38 (13.6%) patients. Optimal impaired random glucose cutoff value for diagnosis of diabetes was found 7.45 mmol/L (AUC 0.956 [CI 0.927-0.984], p<0.001, sensitivity 94.7%, specificity 74.4%), however, same cut-off value showed impaired random glucose as fair diagnostic test for prediabetes (AUC 0.771 [CI 0.717-0.825], p<0.001, sensitivity 72.5%, specificity 77.3%).......

Objectives: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of HOMA-IR, and QUICKI in diagnosing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) considering oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) as gold standard.