A former study of our group [29] and another by Gibot et al [22] in heterogeneous populations of patients with severe sepsis of diverse aetiology investigated the role of early assessment of sTREM-1 as a determinant of final outcome. Results revealed that concentrations greater than 180 pg/ml are accompanied by survival benefit. The exactly opposing finding is reported here. This discrepancy may be explained by the enrolment of more homogeneous populations of patients, compared to these former studies [22, 29] , all suffering with CAP.