Evaluation of complete blood count, c-reactive protein, and lactate dehydrogenase in culturable and unculturable bacteremia for early diagnosis of sepsis

Bacteremia is a bacterial infection that enters the bloodstream. This study was designed to investigate if culture methods could detect the bacterial infection of the bloodstream and to assess certain criteria for bacterial sepsis in culturable and non-culturable blood samples from hospitalized patients, like C-reactive protein (CRP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and complete blood count (CBC). A total of 100 blood samples from patients with symptoms of sepsis who resided in the Hilla City hospital were collected as well as 25 samples as a healthy control group without disease or inflammation. Each sample was divided into three containers; 2ml in an EDTA tube for the CBC test, 3ml in a centrifuged tube for the CRP and LDH test, and 3-7ml in brain heart infusion broth for blood culture. The study result showed that 65 (65%) of 100 samples had abnormal tests, whereas only 25 (25%) of 100 were culture positive. There was a statistically significant difference between patients and control regarding all parameters CRP, LDH, white blood cell (WBC), lymphocyte (LYM) and granulocyte (GRA) (P= 0.000). No significant association in studied parameters was observed between culture-positive and culture-negative patients. Significant strong positive correlation was observed between WBC and LDH  (r= 0.332) (p= 0.007), LYM and GR) (r= -0.983) (p= 0.000), LYM and CRP (r= 0.257) (p= 0.03), and between GRA and LDH (r= 0.254) (p= 0.04). Therefore, the estimation of WBC, granulocytes, lymphocytes count, CRP and LDH values and blood culture results may help in the early identification of the causative agent of sepsis.