https://www.selleckchem.com/ Discriminating between malignant pleural effusion (MPE) and benign pleural effusion (BPE) remains difficult. Thus, novel and efficient biomarkers are required for the diagnosis of pleural effusion (PE). The aim of this study was to validate calprotectin as a diagnostic biomarker of PE in clinical settings. A total of 425 patients were recruited, and the pleural fluid samples collected had BPE in 223 cases (53.7%) or MPE in 137 patients (33%). The samples were all analysed following the same previously validated clinical laboratory protocols and methodology. Calprotectin levels ranged from 772.48 to 3,163.8 ng/mL (median 1,939 ng/mL) in MPE, and 3,216-24,000 ng/mL in BPE (median 9,209 ng/mL; p  less then  0.01), with an area under the curve of 0.848 [95% CI 0.810-0.886]. For a cut-off value of ≤ 6,233.2 ng/mL, we found 96% sensitivity and 60% specificity, with a negative and positive predictive value, and negative and positive likelihood ratios of 96%, 57%, 0.06, and 2.4, respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that low calprotectin levels was a better discriminator of PE than any other variable [OR 28.76 (p  less then  0.0001)]. Our results confirm that calprotectin is a new and useful diagnostic biomarker in patients with PE of uncertain aetiology which has potential applications in clinical practice because it may be a good complement to cytological methods.Recently, relationship between gut microbiota composition and development of obesity has been pointed. However, the gut microbiota composition of individual with obesity is not known yet. Therefore, this systematic review aimed to evaluate differences in profile of gut microbiota between individuals with obesity and individuals with normal weight. A search performed on August 2019 in the databases Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane library, Lilacs and gray literature using the terms "microbiota", "microbiome", "obesity", "obesity morbid", and "humans". Studies assessing the