The second reason that may account for the the lower specificity we report here is that of the 31 patients with no bacterial/parasitic infection but with raised PCT concentrations (false positives), 12 had diseases that have previously been shown to be associated with elevated PCT, namely acute pancreatitis, environmental heatstroke and haemophagocytic syndrome [4,16,17]. This evidence concerns the gene CALCA and parasitic infectious disease.