Figure 1.

Distribution of individual biomarker levels in spinal TB and mechanical back pain and the utility of biomarkers to distinguish spinal TB. (A–D) show the median and interquartile range of biomarkers within each group and the p-value of a Mann-Whitney U test; (E–H) show the rank order of individual biomarker levels when combining the groups with red bars representing spinal TB, blue bars representing mechanical back pain and the dashed line representing the cut-off biomarker value for optimal sensitivity and specificity; (I–L) show Receiver Operating Characteristic plots along with the Area Under the Curve (AUC) and associated 95% confidence interval. Representative plots for Fibrinogen, CRP, NCAM and IFN-γ are shown, each of which had an AUC ≥ 0.88.