The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today cleared the expanded use of the Vidas Brahms PCT Assay to help health care providers determine if antibiotic treatment should be started or stopped in patients with lower respiratory tract infections, such as community-acquired pneumonia, and stopped in patients with sepsis. This is the first test to use procalcitonin , a protein associated with the body’s response to a bacterial infection, as a biomarker to help make antibiotic management decisions in patients with these conditions.