David Huang, MD, was notified by letter that he has been awarded the Emergency Medicine Foundation Young Investigator Award for an abstract he presented at the October 2006 American College of Emergency Physicians Research Forum held in New Orleans. The award presentation will take place at the October 2007 meeting in Seattle.

The abstract. "Procalcitonin in emergency department patients with suspected community-acquired pneumonia - results from the GenIMS (Genetic and Inflammatory Markers of Sepsis) study," analyzed the behavior of a novel infectious disease biomarker, procalcitonin (PCT) within the GenIMS study (PI: Dr. Derek Angus), a large, multicenter study of emergency department patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). The main finding was that over 1 in 5 higher risk (as defined by PSI, the Pneumonia Severity Index) CAP patients had very low procalcitonin level, and these patients had very low 30d mortality rates. The abstract concluded that "PCT may provide prognostic information beyond PSI in higher risk patients." Co-authors are Melinda Carter, John Kellum and Derek Angus of our CCM Department's CRISMA Laboratory, Lisa Weissfeld and Lan Kong of Pitt's GSPH Dept. of Biostatistics, and Don Yealy of Pitt's Dept. of Emergency Medicine.

Congratulations to Dr. Huang!