CONCLUSIONS: Urinary NT-proBNP demonstrated moderate discriminatory ability and high specificity for pediatric septic shock, comparable to serum NT-proBNP, although its correlation with PSS was modest. It may have potential value as an adjunctive rule-in biomarker for cardiovascular stress in pediatric sepsis, but not as a screening tool or replacement for clinical assessment. Further studies are needed to determine its broader clinical utility in pediatric sepsis.

BACKGROUND: Sepsis-associated acute kidney injury (SA-AKI) is a severe and prevalent complication in critically ill patients, characterized by high mortality and a lack of reliable biomarkers that reflect inflammatory pathway activation and disease severity. Although the NLRP3 inflammasome is known to mediate inflammatory responses, pyroptosis, and renal injury, its clinical relevance in human SA-AKI remains poorly defined. This study aimed to characterize the expression profiles, dynamic...

CONCLUSIONS: Acute MAP augmentation elicits heterogeneous cardiovascular responses in patients with septic shock despite similar increases in arterial pressure. Flow deterioration is characterized by worsening VA coupling, reduced stroke volume, and impaired systolic adaptation, potentially modulated by changes in the derived venous return indices.

CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of an infection surveillance system as part of pharmacovigilance, which helped detect the source of infection within a few days of the outbreak alert. Implementing standardized healthcare-associated infection (HAI) surveillance in a low-resource setting detected an ongoing heparin-associated outbreak. The outbreak investigation and the use of a multimodal approach reduced incident cases and informed changes in infection prevention and control...