Assessment of endocan as a prognostic biomarker in septic calves with diarrhoea caused by Escherichia coli K99.

This study aimed to determine the prognostic impact of serum Endocan levels due to E. coli K99+ driven systemic inflamatuary response syndrome (SIRS), sepsis (SE) and septic shock (SS). The samples were with 24 diarrhoeic calves and 8 health calves aged 0-7 days. The diarrhoeic calves were divided equally into three groups as the SS group, the SE group and the SIRS group. Repeated serum samples were collected at the 0th, 3rd and 6th hours. The collected samples were used to analyse Endocan and certain proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1β ve IL-6) and acute phase proteins (SAA and Hp). A statistically meaningful difference was observed between the serum Endocan levels of the groups (P < 0.001). The E. coli infected diarrhoeic calves in the SS group had Endocan levels higher than others in other groups. Also, as a prognostic value, a statistically meaningful difference was observed between the repeated Endocan concentrations collected from dead and surviving calves (P < 0.01, P = 0.001, P < 0.001, respectively). When the cut-off point for Endocan 6th hour tests was considered > 131.92, the AUC value was 0.825, the sensitivity was %81.82, the specificity was %77.2, +LR: 3.60, -LR: 0.24 (P < 0.05). As a result, in repeated analysis, serum Endocan levels were shown to be a rigorous indicator of the severity of inflammation in diarrhoeic calves and mortality when the positive correlation between other proinflammatory cytokine and acute phase proteins was taken into consideration.