Urinary pneumococcal antigen testing should be incorporated into the standard approaches for guiding treatment in community-acquired pneumonia, an Archives of Internal Medicine study concludes.
Researchers studied some 500 cases of CAP, establishing definite or probable S. pneumoniae infection by culture or Gram stain in about one third. The urinary antigen test was found to have a sensitivity of about 70% in detecting S. pneumoniae, a specificity of about 95%, and a positive predictive value of about 90%.
The authors conclude that the test “should be incorporated into clinical guidelines at the same level as classic microbiological studies because it can supplement, but not replace, their results.”
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