A new simple affinity purification methodfor human CRP using Arginine-Sepharose4B was developed with a recovery of >90 %and containing 100 mg/l. However, 32 % of thepatients with bacterial infections had WBC100 mg/l) and viral meningitis ohen hadsigns of extensive tissue involvement.The median duration of illness prior to ad-mission for 97 patients (mean age 69.6years) with community-acquired pneumonia(CAP) was four days (range: <1-25 days). Onadmission 64 % of the patients were hy-poalbuminemic (<37g/1). The serum level ofalbumin at admission did not correlate withthe nutritional measurements, however. a sig-nificant negative correlation was found forserum albumin with the acute phase proteins:CRP, haptoglobin, a-l-antitrypsin and oro-somucoid. These results strongly indicate thatinflammatory reaction is the main causes ofthe low serum albumin level in patients withCAP. The serum level of CRP was high-est atadmission (geometric mean: 154 mg/l) andbegan to decrease from day 3 indicating avery earlier response to the recovery of thepatients. The median normalisation rate ofCRP was 3.3 days. Albumin, transferrin. a-1anti-trypsin, haptoglobin, and orosomucoidwere not useful for evaluation of response totherapy during the hospitalisation phase inpatients with CAP.CRP was evaluated together with other plasmaproteins as prognostic markers in patientswith malignant melanoma (N=643). Theserum levels of the different serum proteinshad independent prognostic value in relationto the clinical stage in multivariate analyses.For each clinical stage the serum valuesbelow respectively above the different cut-offlevels for albumin and transthyretin on onehand and the acute phase proteins CRP,haptoglobin, and orosomucoid on the otherhand significantly influenced the survivalrate and the relative hazard with respect todeath .Key words: CRP, general practice, septi-caemia, endocarditis, influenza, bacterialmeningitis, viral meningitis, community-acquired pneumonia, malignant melanoma,albumin, transferrin, a-1 anti-trypsin, hapto-globin, orosomucoid, transthyretin, iron
