Relationship between reduced albumin and inflammation in the critically ill

I read the interesting article by Zampieri and colleagues [1] reporting the new association between inflammatory cytokines and acid-base components in 87 ICU patients. I would like to note that whatever approach is used to investigate the acid-base status (the celebrated bicarbonate-centered approach, the base excess methodology or the physicochemical approach) most of the acidbase parameters have values within or slightly beyond the normal range [2,3]. Specifically, this is true for the pH, the pCO2 and the HCO3 values as well as for the standard base excess (SBE) value. As regards the physicochemical approach used by the authors, the independent variables determining the pH value show only a marginal distance, if any, from their reference value [2]. Notably, the SIDa (apparent strong ion difference) value is perfectly normal. The SIG (strong ion gap) value is above the upper normal