Inflammatory markers

The inflammatory markers are a disparate set of biomarkers that are used clinically to assess a patient for:

  • presence/absence of an active inflammatory disease process
  • activity of a known disease

Possible disease processes may include infective, malignant and autoimmune diseases, although it is now recognized that these markers may be raised, often only mildly, in a broad spectrum of disease, from atherosclerosis to mental illness, because many diseases are now known/suspected to have an inflammatory component.

List of inflammatory markers

Traditionally the key inflammatory markers were :

However other markers are also used, including:

  • acute phase proteins (e.g. fibrinogen, ferritin)
  • IL-6
  • IL-10
  • procalcitonin
  • soluble IL-2 receptor
  • tumor necrosis factor (TNF)

Elevated inflammatory markers