Measuring procalcitonin to overcome heterophilic-antibody-induced spurious hypercalcitoninemia

What is it about?

Calcitonin (CT) is a highly sensitive tumour marker of medullary thyroid cancer (MTC). Hovewer, spuriously increased CT is found in some patients without MTC. In these cases procalcitonin is tipically undetectable and, consequently, may be adopted as a reflex test to confirm/refute positive CT results.

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