The number of cases in the surviving patients, which occurred in the

first (20-49 years) and the second strata (50-64 years) were significantly higher than those occurring in the deceased patients (table 2). However, the number of cases from the deceased patients (n=487, 88.55%), which occurred in the third strata (≥65 years) was significantly higher than those from the surviving patients (n=392, 35.64 %) (table 2). The number of deceased and surviving patients in subnormal (leukopenia), normal, and above normal (leukocytosis) ranges of WBC counts was used to calculate likelihood ratio for the two groups (table 3). The likelihood ratio for leukocytosis Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and leukopenia was 1.4 and 2.3, respectively. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical This indicated that these two abnormalities were about 1.4 and 2.3 times more likely to occur in deceased patients than in surviving patients (table 3). Table 3 The likelihood ratios for different ranges of WBC counts in deceased (n=550) and surviving patients (n=1650) Discussion Most relevant studies have evaluated the effects of leukocytosis in varying Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical hospital wards, age groups, special diseases, and have also used varying definitions.5-10,12,13

The present study showed that more than one third (40%) of all patients admitted to a general hospital had a WBC >10×109/l. There is a considerable evidence that leukocytosis may be an independent predictor for death at least for specific Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical clinical outcomes.5-10 One study,14 has reported no significant relationship between leukocytosis and mortality, and only one study,6 has reported that the WBC count was an independent predictor of all causes of mortality. However, the current study shows that leukocytosis had a positive relationship with mortality in general hospitalized patients.

Mortality for patients with leukocytosis (WBC counts of >10×109/l) in this study was 8 %, which was less than Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical that reported by Crabtree and others (18.6%).10 This difference may be related to the special group of patients (patients with suspected infection in the surgical services) analyzed by these authors. There appears to be no report in the literature studying the RG7204 ic50 relation Metalloexopeptidase between mortality and leukocytosis among patients admitted to various hospital wards. In this study, the relationship between WBC count levels and mortality appeared as a “U” shape curve, showing an association between higher and lower levels of white blood cell count and mortality. The strengths of this study were the selection of all patients admitted to various hospital wards, the recruitment of two controls per each case, and the use of a large number of patients in the dataset. The large datasets used in this study allowed us to get sufficient number of patients to investigate the effect of different levels of WBC (leukopenia, normal level and leukocytosis) on in-patient outcome.