The Utility of Acute-Phase Proteins in the Assessment of Treatment Response in Dogs With Bacterial Pneumonia

Viitanen, S.J.; Lappalainen, A.K.; Christensen, M.B.; Sankari, S.; Rajamäki, M.M.

Normality testing was performed by Shapiro-Wilk's test of normality and normal Q-Q plots. The differences between dogs with lsBP and msBP as well as between dogs with Escherichia coliinduced BP and BP caused by other organisms were evaluated by the independent samples Student's t-test (normally distributed variables) and Mann-Whitney U-test (non-normally distributed variables). The Mann-Whitney U-test also was used to evaluate whether there were differences in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and transtracheal wash (TTW) fluid differential cell counts and whether the duration of antimicrobial treatment differed in dogs with CRP-guided and conventional treatment. Initial serum CRP, SAA, Hp, and albumin concentrations were compared among groups of healthy dogs as well as dogs with <2 days and >2 days of hospitalization by the Mann-Whitney U-test. Bonferroni correction was used in the pairwise comparisons to control for the family-wise error rate.