The Clinical Significance of Procalcitonin Elevation in Patients over 75 Years Old Admitted for COVID-19 Pneumonia

Table 5

Multivariate Cox regression model, testing variables associated with hospital mortality.

	Hazard ratio	95% confidence interval	^a
Model 1—patients aged 75 or younger ()
Age, years	1.134	1.082-1.189	<0.001
Sex, female vs. male	0.993	0.558-1.768	0.981
ACE-I treatment	0.706	0.376-1.327	0.279
ARB treatment	1.144	0.588-2.225	0.692
Consolidations on chest HRCT	1.312	0.718-2.396	0.377
Nasopharyngeal swab positive for SARS-CoV-2	1.680	0.863-3.271	0.127
Procalcitonin			0.060
Level 2 vs. level 1	1.185	0.357-3.930	0.782
Level 3 vs. level 1	1.600	0.429-5.974	0.484
Level 4 vs. level 1	3.308	0.855-12.804	0.083
Model 2— ()
Age, years	1.013	0.986-1.041	0.348
Sex, female vs. male	0.916	0.677-1.239	0.568
ACE-I treatment	1.016	0.714-1.446	0.929
ARB treatment	0.804	0.529-1.221	0.306
Consolidations on chest HRCT	1.130	0.817-1.564	0.459
Nasopharyngeal swab positive for SARS-CoV-2	1.816	1.268-2.602	0.001
Procalcitonin			<0.001
Level 2 vs. level 1	13.388	1.861-96.301	0.010
Level 3 vs. level 1	31.090	4.240-227.985	0.001
Level 4 vs. level 1	30.629	4.176-224.645	0.001

Procalcitonin level 1: <0.05 ng/ml; level 2: ≥0.05 and <0.5 ng/ml; level 3: ≥0.5 and <2 ng/ml; level 4: ≥2 ng/ml. ACE-I: angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors; ARB: angiotensin receptor blockers; HRCT: high-resolution computed tomography.