The Pros and Cons of Procalcitonin

David Perry: Procalcitonin is a chemokine. It's activated by contact with bacterial surface or by the endotoxin that the bacteria might stimulate. He says when you're infected with E. coli, every tissue organ in the body responds with the turning on of the machinery that makes ProCalcitonin. When you are infected with a virus and don't turn on those Proinflammatory cytokines, it turns on gamma interferon, which blocks the transcription of the Procal citonin gene. So there was a clear cut distinction between these two types of infection.