CRITICAL CARE Elevated S100B levels do not correlate with the severity of encephalopathy during sepsis

Background. Sepsis-associated encephalopathy (SAE) is defined as a diffuse cerebral dysfunction induced by the systemic response to infection without any clinical or laboratory evidence of direct infectious involvement of the central nervous system. The astroglial protein S100B has been used as a marker of severity of brain injury and as a prognostic index in trauma patients and cardiac arrest survivors. We measured S100B serum levels in patients with severe sepsis to investigate if the severity of SAE correlated with an increase in S100B levels.