Wu HM, et al. – In this study conducted at a referral hospital from January 2012 to January 2018, researchers assessed the association of serum procalcitonin (PCT) with short-term outcomes in patients with acute severe ulcerative colitis (ASUC). Study participants included 152 patients with ASUC, of whom 81 responded to intravenous corticosteroids (IVCS) and 71 failed (62 required short-term colectomy and 9 responded to second-line rescue therapy). IVCS-failure cases and surgical cases displayed significantly higher serum PCT on admission than the medical responders, suggesting that, in ASUC patients, serum PCT on admission could be a potential early non-invasive predictive biomarker for IVCS failure. A combination of PCT and fecal calprotectin seemed to potentially improve the predictive value.