ACUTE PHASE RESPONSE-ESTIMATION OF C-REACTIVE PROTEIN (CRP) LEVELS AND ITS UTILITY IN INTERPRETING IN WIDAL TEST POSITIVE CASES
The acute phase response (ARP) is the body‟s generic response to any significant injury, but its magnitude is greatly enhanced if infection is involved. C- reactive protein is a marker of inflammation, which involves a number of complex processes, can be involved by any infection (or) trauma. As soon as inflammatory, stimulus has been eliminated the CRP level declines. The present study was designed to evaluate the sensitivity of C- reactive protein and blood culture in diagnosing febrile cases that are widal positive. [77.5% of cases are responding to] C- reactive protein estimated by latex agglutinate slide method which is simple to perform and easy to interpret. The present study of 40 widal positive cases, 77.5% cases should raised CRP levels with 64% strong positive, 25% positive and 9% weak positive. 32.55 cases showed blood culture positive with 11 true positive for enteric fever and 2 showed false positive for enteric fever.25% cases shown CRP+Ve and blood culture +Ve 525 cases shown CRP+Ve with blood culture –Ve and 75% cases shown CRP–Ve and blood culture were also und to be negative. From the above findings we can conclude that CRP positively cases are high in widal positive cases than blood culture positive cases. Elevations of CRP occur in nearly 70 disease states, including bacterial infections, viral infections, malignant tumours etc. Thus it lacks specifically and rules out CRP as a definitive diagnostic tool. Normal CRP levels in widal positive sera in low titres may be considered as non-enteric fever case. A negative CRP test with low titer widal positive response may be considered as a non-enteric fever case. It is necessary to make a further study using larger sample size