ESR1 and bacterial infectious disease with sepsis: The results indicate that PCT had a highly predictive value for the clinical outcomes such as death, positive bacterial blood and sputum cultures with an AUC of 0.69, 0.81, 0.75 respectively (PCT vs ESR, p = 0.048; PCT vs CRP, p = 0.047; PCT vs ferritin, p = 0.01 for positive cultures on day 1) and was superior in predicting bacteremia as compared to other inflammatory biomarkers (Fig 3, panel B).