Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) 在補體活化作用、輔助吞噬細胞的辨識病原體作用及辨識炎症反應扮演一個很重要的角色。骨盆腔炎症的症狀與許多骨盆相關疾病類似，所以很難經由一般的實驗室檢查來診斷。因此，針對骨盆腔炎症，如何尋找較具專一性、特異性的血液指標就顯得格外重要。因此，我們分別收集了64個骨盆腔炎症患者及70個健康婦女的血液檢體，以全自動血球分析儀、血清蛋白分析儀及ELISA的方法進行白血球、嗜中性球、C反應蛋白與Pentraxin 3的檢測。實驗結果發現骨盆腔炎症患者其白血球、嗜中性球、C反應蛋白與Pentraxin 3的數值比健康婦女皆有較高的表現。另外，我們再進一步比較骨盆腔炎症患者其治療前與治療後的數值，結果也有相同的表現。而我們最後分析白血球、嗜中性球、C反應蛋白與Pentraxin 3之間的相關性，結果發現白血球、嗜中性球、C反應蛋白與Pentraxin 3的數值皆呈現明顯的正相關。我們也發現 Pentraxin 3比CRP具有較高的靈敏度( Pentraxin 3: 84.38%; CRP: 79.69%) 和較低的假陰性率(Pentraxin 3: 15.63%; CRP: 20.31%)。最後，我們分析64位受診斷為PID的患者在接受治療期間其住院天數與PTX3之間的相關性。結果顯示PTX3的數值與住院天數之間皆呈現有意義的正相關性 (Spearman相關係數r＝0.581, P<0.001)。由此可知當骨盆腔炎症患者其PTX3濃度越高時，此患者在醫院的住院天數就會較長，顯示PTX3的濃度與骨盆腔炎症的嚴重程度有關。因此，我們發現 Pentraxin 3比CRP更具有診斷骨盆腔炎症的優勢，進而提供更好的診斷輔助，以防止女性的不孕。 Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) plays an important role in innate immune responses and in inflammation disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic and prognostic potential of PTX3 in pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and correlate it with the severity and outcome of PID. In this study, we collected blood specimens from 64 patients with PID before and after treatment and 70 healthy controls and measured the plasma levels of PTX3 using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits. We found that the plasma level of PTX3 expression was elevated in PID patients compared with healthy controls, and decreased significantly after they received treatment. When we set the cutoff level of plasma PTX3 at 2.87 ng/mL, PTX3 had higher sensitivity (84.38 %) and lower false negative rate (15.63 %) than CRP (79.69 % and 20.31 %, respectively) in predicting PID. The level of PTX3 also exhibited a significant correlation with length of hospital stay (r=0.581, p<0.001). Plasma PTX3 concentration not only predicts the presence of PID with lower false negative rate than CRP, but plasma PTX3 concentration is also affiliated with the length of the hospital stay.
